On Fri, Aug 08, 2003 at 10:02:08AM +0100, Colin Watson wrote: > On Fri, Aug 08, 2003 at 01:33:55AM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote: > > On Fri, 8 Aug 2003 09:04:18 +0100 > > Colin Watson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Thu, Aug 07, 2003 at 07:53:23PM -0700, Paul Johnson wrote: > > > > On Mon, Aug 04, 2003 at 04:35:48PM +0100, Pigeon wrote: > > > > > Note that: > > > > > rm -rf /home/* won't get rid of those pesky dot files > > > > > rm -rf /home/.* gets rid of a little bit too much... > > > > > > > > Doh! Yeah, you're right. Forgot that many tools ignore hidden files > > > > with no option to *not* ignore hidden files. > > > > > The option's certainly there, at least if bash is your shell. 'shopt -s > > > dotglob' (which won't cause * to include . and ..); 'shopt -u dotglob' > > > turns it back off.
Useful... thanks for the tip. > > Wait, whoa, sorry I missed this earlier but why does someone think that rm > > -rf dir/* will miss . files? > > Certainly dotfiles in subdirectories will be included. > > > Unless those files are in /home. Why would there be . files in /home? > > Shouldn't /home only contain directories? > > Well, indeed, although I have been known to have a /home/.system > directory in the past that contained stuff I'd moved from other > filesystems due to a lack of disk space in the right places. Yeah, I've done things like this as well... I should have been more verbose :-) Although in general /home and other top-level directories don't contain dot files, some do: two instances here for /home :-) , /root does, and any nonstandard additions (eg. extra mount points with filesystems mounted) might do. Having shot myself in the foot a couple of times, I find it useful to get into the habit, when moving directory trees about, of using commands which 'do what I mean' where dot files are involved. -- Pigeon Be kind to pigeons Get my GPG key here: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x21C61F7F
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