Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!beta!unm-la!unmvax!nmtsun!hydrovax
From: hydrovax@nmtsun.nmt.edu (M. Warner Losh)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Unix/VMS "wars" & Machine MIPS "ratings"
Message-ID: <7@nmtsun.nmt.edu>
Date: 21 Mar 88 04:47:31 GMT
References: <36568QAA@PSUVM> <2413@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: hydrovax@nmtsun.UUCP (M. Warner Losh)
Organization: NMT Hydrology program
Lines: 31
Keywords: Random flame
Summary: WRONG WRONG WRONG

In article <2413@bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
>In article <36568QAA@PSUVM> QAA@PSUVM.BITNET writes:
>>To all UNIX lovers - give me ONE good reason why "rm" is better than "delete"
>>to delete a file.
>
>The VMS "delete" command has some serious flaws.  It can't recursively
>delete a directory subtree.  It will also blindly delete a file even if
>it has multiple directory entries for it, thus invalidating them with
>no warning to the user.  (This is really a VMS file system problem.)
How many times does this happen.  VMS does not really support file that have
more than one link.  Are you saying that if I print a file then delete it,
before it has a change to clear the queue, I end up with garbage on the disk?
I don't think so.

>Also, "delete" simply aborts with an error if the file that the user
>wanted to delete is write-protected, instead of allowing the user to
                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This is wrong.  I just delete a file
that had delete permission, but no write permission.
>override the protection as the UNIX "rm" command does.

The VMS delete command WILL allow a user to delete the file if the file
has DELETE protection for the file.  If you don't have delete permission,
then you can't delete the file at all.  Period.  That's the way VMS works.
It is for security reasons.


-- 
bitnet:	losh@nmt.csnet			M. Warner Losh
	warner@hydrovax.nmt.csnet    ! Don't know if this works, let me know.
csnet:	warner@hydrovax.nmt.edu
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