On 23/03/2008, Andrew M.A. Cater <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 03:50:32PM -0500, William Pitcock wrote: > > Hi, > > > > On Sat, 2008-03-22 at 13:51 +0100, Adam Borowski wrote: > > > To get those Vistaesque questions, "alias rm='rm -i'" is surely not > > > worth a > > > package. It's slightly larger in scope, but only slightly, as > > > removing > > > files as root means you mess with system directories, right? > > > > Yes, that's what I mean: what's wrong with making rm -i the default > > behaviour? We could do that by simply patching coreutils. > > > > William > > Go away and learn: there have been whole flamewars on this subject :) > > Red Hat (if I remember correctly) used to alias rm automatically to rm > -i . The savvy users used to unalias rm before using it. > > If, when you run as root, rm always asks - you get used to it. You move > to a different system where there is no alias or someone has turned it > off - and suddenly rm MEANS rm with no breathing space. > > Much better, in my opinion which is shared by some others, to _always_ > have rm as rm. There's nothing to stop the cautious explicitly calling > rm as rm -i anyway - but when you need to delete large numbers of files, > rm -i is a _real_ nuisance. > > AndyC > >
I've made my mistakes with rm - and tried to learn from them. I see no reason why we should default to rm -i . The alias is easy enough to set up if one needs it and one can still royally muck things up with rm -rf or \rm. I agree that it could create problems for those used to rm -i when they encounter a pure rm machine but I think it is therefore better that people learn to alias commands and the limitations and get arounds of that alisasing. In *nix based systems rm has always meant rm - deleting files does just that. The KDE Desktop provides the option to keep this functionality or have temporary trash can on the desktop. However, you don't get the option of a trashcan on the command line - unless you want to write your own script for it. Regards Lesley -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
