On 2/2/22 16:28, admin4 wrote: > but the UNIX philosophy is to simplify, simplify, simplify,and pretty > much follow that principle and it works wonders :) > > what about simplifying the usability & build in fail safes?
You have a point that simplicity is good and nice. Often the GNU command line projects like coreutils, findutils, grep, etc. are receiving begging requests to add yet another option for a certain use case (even although there exists another way to do it). Most often we can reject those requests; new options or functions add complexity to the code which decreases maintainability. But once an option or a feature is added, it is very hard to remove it again - for decades. > so everyone here says it is intended behavior that find -delete -name > "*searchforthis*" just deletes everything under the current dir . In case of 'find -delete', I don't see that we could or should aim to remove it: it is a useful feature, and - although it's a GNU extension - many admins and scripts are using it. Many command line tools (rm, dd, find, cp, mv, ...) are very powerful and therefore potentially dangerous if one uses them carelessly. I could think about many ways to cripple a system, e.g. the typical `rm -rf /*` which you mention on your web page. This is like using a Japanese kitchen knife: it may be a bloody experience in the beginning, but using it carefully more and more each day, one will be happy to have that powerful and good tool. > ok, guess there will have to be a find2 then well, this is open source: just feel free to clone the source repo and keep patches to remove the -delete option for your installations if you like. > try it out as root in / and have phun restoring! > [...] > so cu in 2025 Bad things like this can always happen, and I feel with you, but hey, we're in 2022, so having a good backup doesn't seem to be that outlandish. I mean, there are many every-day threats/risks for one's data and disks, including hardware failure. Have a nice day, Berny
