Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!sgi!arisia!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: fixing rm * (was: Worm/Passwords)
Message-ID: <780@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 30 Nov 88 11:27:42 GMT
References: <22401@cornell.UUCP> <4627@rayssd.ray.com> <8563@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US> <125@embossed.UUCP> <672@quintus.UUCP> <1232@atari.UUCP> <812@hadron.UUCP> <727@quintus.UUCP> <1248@atari.UUCP>
Sender: news@quintus.UUCP
Reply-To: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
Lines: 22

In article <1248@atari.UUCP> achar@atari.UUCP (Alan Char) writes:
>In article <727@quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>|One answer, of course, would be to have a
>|	GLOBASK=rm:rmdir
>|shell variable, so that one could put
>|	GLOBASK=a.rm:$GLOBASK
>|in ones .profile.  (Did I just make a constructive suggestion?  Oops.)
>
>GLOBASK is not that different from expandcheck.  In fact,
>setting GLOBASK=<all commands> is exactly the same as setting
>expandcheck=1 modulo the prompt text.

No it isn't, because it is not *possible* to set GLOBASK=<all commands>.
That's an open set.  (The set of commands accessible through my $PATH at
the moment is 661, and that's after I pruned my $PATH.)  It's also quite
a different perspective; it's quite pointless to limit
	echo * | wc -w
which expandcheck would do, whereas the GLOBASK approach explicitly
identifies only the believed-dangerous commands.

I am not seriously proposing GLOBASK; just pointing out that more focussed
approaches than expandcheck are possible.