coreutils 9.3 coreutils/man/rm.x Even though "rm" was modified, ==== Sat Apr 20 00:03:09 1991 David J. MacKenzie (djm at geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu) ... * rm.c (rm): Refuse to remove path/. and path/.., as well as `.' and `..', for POSIX. ... ==== the rm(1) man page completely fails to mention this particular POSIX promise.
If the user already knows how GNU rm will respond to "rm -rf *", they don't need to look at the man page. If the user does *not* know how GNU rm will respond to "rm -rf *", the GNU rm man page is not going to help them. Language should be added to the GNU rm man page explicitly stating the POSIX behavior: ==== If either of the files dot or dot-dot are specified as the basename portion of an operand (that is, the final pathname component) or if an operand resolves to the root directory, rm shall write a diagnostic message to standard error and do nothing more with such operands. ==== including the additional requirement with respect to the root directory.
