On 4/6/07, James G. Sack (jim) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Another practical recommendation:
Never include _any_ paths in a rm -rf command
That is, if you want to get rid of a tree at /path/to/somedir
Always cd to the direct parent .. cd /path/to
Run the command with the bare dir name .. rm -rf somedir
The idea: if you _never have any slash_ in the command then you can't
accidentally get a disaster such as could happen with inadvertent
spaces, such as
rm -rf / path/to/somedir .. would operate on '/' OOPS
Yes but . . . better be sure that the "cd" succeeded. It might fail
because you misspelled the directory name. Then you will be invoking
"rm -rf" in the directory where you started, not the one you wanted.
Too easy to get in the habit of not watching the result of commands
that you _know_ will do what you want.
Especially important if you want to put a command of this type into a
shell script.
carl
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carl lowenstein marine physical lab u.c. san diego
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