Aucbvax.4034
fa.unix-wizards
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!unix-wizards
Thu Sep 24 23:06:05 1981
Re: rm and shell metacharacters
>From MathStat.jmrubin@Berkeley Thu Sep 24 14:03:34 1981
Two ways of making rm safer:
(1) Let it become default interactive if some environmental
variable is set to a non-null value. Preferably, there should be a flag
to just get back to normal, and -f should turn interaction off.
(2) Move /ab/cde/file to /ab/cde/#file in lieu of re-
moving it. Then, there has to be either a recursive cleanout of such
files at logout, (from the home directory down) or a periodic garbage
collector daemon. This system is similar to the TOPS-20 and it comes
from the Rand mhmail system. The Rand mhmail programs don't
take care of rm'ing # files, but, in practice, this doesn't matter too
much for the mail system, because the files that get #'s are either called
draft or have a numerical name, so such files don't usually proliferate.
It would matter if it were done in general; I'm not sure what Rand does
to prevent backup proliferation.
Joel Rubin
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