Xref: utzoo comp.unix.wizards:12435 news.sysadmin:1480
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!portal!atari!achar
From: achar@atari.UUCP (Alan Char)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,news.sysadmin
Subject: fixing rm * (was: Worm/Passwords)
Message-ID: <1232@atari.UUCP>
Date: 15 Nov 88 00:39:36 GMT
References: <22401@cornell.UUCP> <4627@rayssd.ray.com> <8563@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US> <125@embossed.UUCP> <672@quintus.UUCP>
Reply-To: achar@atari.UUCP (Alan Char)
Followup-To: comp.unix.wizards
Organization: Atari (US) Corporation, Sunnyvale, California
Lines: 23

In article <672@quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
|Now, how _do_ you fix "rm *"?  Suppose you restrict rm to delete exactly
|one file.  Watch:
|	foreach F (* .o)
|	    rm $F
|	end
|OOPS!  Major bug in foreach!  Better fix that.
|	[ other examples ]
|
|Moral: you can't change _one_ thing.

Actually, you can change the shell.  (Nowadays, that's more like three to
five things.)  For example, I would REALLY appreciate in csh a variable

	set expandcheck=5

So that if some shell expansion expanded to more than 5 things, it would
prompt for confirmation:

	% rm * .o
	*: matches 400 files, are you sure?

Comments on this idea?  --Alan