Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!ncar!unmvax!turing.unm.edu!mike
From: mike@turing.unm.edu (Michael I. Bushnell)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Fun with *
Message-ID: <2155@unmvax.unm.edu>
Date: 20 Nov 88 05:48:01 GMT
References: <1232@atari.UUCP> <564@comdesign.CDI.COM> <17247@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <8445@alice.UUCP> <17263@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
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Reply-To: mike@turing.unm.edu (Michael I. Bushnell)
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In article <17263@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) writes:

>I'm not asking about how to remove the file (thanks, anyway, although
>I see the how-many-ways-to-do-so discussion is starting up again): I'm
>just saying that "while you're at it [ie, `fixing' rm *]", you as might
>as well consider the problem of the user who wants to remove some of his
>files, and types "rm -i *", expecting to get interactive prompting, and
>instead has all his files removed.  If the first file is "-f", you now
>have one unhappy user.

Actually you don't:
Script started on Sat Nov 19 22:42:02 1988
turing.unm.edu 1 ls
foo
turing.unm.edu 2 touch ./-f
turing.unm.edu 3 ls
-f      foo
turing.unm.edu 4 rm -i *
rm: remove foo? y
turing.unm.edu 5 ls
-f
turing.unm.edu 6 ^D
script done on Sat Nov 19 22:42:23 1988

All that happens is that ./-f isn't removed.  As the man page *and*
the source (RTFS, you know...) say, -f prevents error messages and the
asking of questions for files you can't write.  




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