new expected behavior? src/bin/rm/rm.c

[George Georgalis]

On Thu, Jun 02, 2005 at 09:00:21PM -0700, Matthew Dillon wrote:
>
>    The question is whether -I should override -f, whether we should require
>    two -f's to override -I (since -I is supposed to be a safety feature),
>    whether the default csh.cshrc should contain the alias, and/or whether
>    the 'rm' program should be smart and detect background operation
>    (which is easy to test) and disable -I if so.
>
>    I am kinda leaning towards detecting background operation and disabling
>    -I in that case, plus also requiring two -f's to override a prior -I.
>    What do people think?

I don't want to specify -ff every time I remove something from a default
install.

The value, I thought, of -I was that it doesn't ask about *every* file
vs 'rm -ir'; if you use -I as a shell alias, what's the problem with
overriding it with -f? Habitual "-rf" entries are not a dumb user trait,
it's an experienced admin trait. If people learn with -I they'll never
start accidently using -f, they may only use it in scripts.

The real benefit of -I is that it means we don't need to specify -f all
the time, so what's the problem of -f overriding -i _and_ -I, when it is
used? -- in which case a background test is not really necessary (but
may be a good idea anyway).

// George


-- 
George Georgalis, systems architect, administrator Linux BSD IXOYE
http://galis.org/george/ cell:646-331-2027 mailto:george at xxxxxxxxx