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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ARROW-9121?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=17142176#comment-17142176
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Neal Richardson commented on ARROW-9121:
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Is it expected that people will use Arrow for the purpose of deleting the
contents of their file system? Or is it more likely that this would be a
(terrible) accident?
I tend to agree that "delete everything" is dangerous as a default.
Would a compromise solution be to leave the C++ library as is and put up (more)
guardrails in pyarrow, the R package, etc., where we might expect a user to
type something they don't mean?
> [C++] Do not wipe the filesystem when path is empty
> ---------------------------------------------------
>
> Key: ARROW-9121
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ARROW-9121
> Project: Apache Arrow
> Issue Type: Bug
> Components: C++
> Reporter: Mohamed Zenadi
> Assignee: Krisztian Szucs
> Priority: Minor
> Fix For: 1.0.0
>
>
> The `DeleteDirContents` method in the filesystems api has a default behavior
> or *wiping* the whole filesystem if we give it an empty path.
>
> It's documented as:
> > Like DeleteDir, but doesn’t delete the directory itself. Passing an empty
> path (“”) will wipe the entire filesystem tree.
>
> And the corresponding code confirms that:
> {code:java}
> auto parts = SplitAbstractPath(path);
> RETURN_NOT_OK(ValidateAbstractPathParts(parts));
>
> if (parts.empty()) {
> // Wipe filesystem
> impl_->RootDir().entries.clear();
> return Status::OK();
> }
> {code}
>
> This is a weird default that does not make sense. If the user wanted really
> to wipe his filesystem, he'd pass a `/`.
>
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