In defense of rm-damnit.1
Bruce Karsh
karsh at geowhiz.UUCP
Fri Apr 12 16:38:12 AEST 1985
Several people have written to tell me that the program
rm-damnit is not needed. I.e. you can do the same thing
in different ways. Here is a sample of the responses.
> Uh. I hate to burst your bubble. But doesn't
> rm -i
> do the same thing?
What is suggested usually is:
rm -i *
That doesn't work (at least on my machine) because
the shell expansion of * strips the high bit of the
file names.
A better suggestion was proposed by one person:
rm -ir .
This will indeed work, but:
1) It puts your whole directory tree at (a small) risk.
Rm-damnit does not do a recursive search. (Admittedly
you don't have to search the whole tree, but you do
kind of expose the whole tree to the rm command.)
2) Rm-damnit is easily understood, remembered, and used
by less sophisticated users. It comes with a handy
man page that (I hope) clearly describes how and why
to use it.
I look at rm-damnit as a nice convenience, nothing more.
It is nowhere written that UN*X can have only one file
remover program. I hope that this program can be of use
to some people. If you find it to be overly redundant or
unnecessary, please accept my apologies. Otherwise, use it
in good health.
--
Bruce Karsh |
U. Wisc. Dept. Geology and Geophysics |
1215 W Dayton, Madison, WI 53706 | This space for rent.
(608) 262-1697 |
{ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!geowhiz!karsh |
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