Rm using .# (recap) and some further thoughts.

[John 'tms' Navarra]

In article <1991May9.191652.26724 at athena.mit.edu> jik at athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) writes:
>In article <1991May9.025448.25243 at casbah.acns.nwu.edu>, navarra at casbah.acns.nwu.edu (John 'tms' Navarra) writes:
>|>  	1) Rm .# does not support users naming files .# anything because they
>|>            would subsequently be deleted.
>
>  The convention of files beginning with .# being temporary and purge-able by
>the system is far older than Project Athena's "delete" package.  Vendors have
>been shipping systems that search for and delete old .# files by default for
>many years, just as they search for and delete # files, ~ files, and in some
>cases a.out and core files.
>
>  You would do well to learn a bit more about the history of Unix and its
>current variants before you go around declaring that something both old and
>common in Unix is "TOTALLY un-standard" and "a non-standard restriction on
>many computers."

           One guy mentioned emacs -- what about people who use vi? My Sun
 systems stores some temporary mail files in a # form but MANY new systems
 do not use this .# technology! 
 
>
>
>|> 	3) Rm .# files do not hide from ls -a commands. Despite what Jon has  
>|>            said, i don't think this command is all that uncommon.
>
>  Well, then, we'll have to agree to disagree.  I have both "rm" and "rmdir"
>aliased to delete in my account, and I know a lot of hacker-types (the people
>who are most likely to use "ls -a") at Athena who do the same, and I have
>never heard this complaint before.  If you think it's more of a problem than I
>do, there is nothing I can do about that.
>
>|> 	4) This problem of deleting large numbers of files brings up a quota 
>|>            issue. Many systems have quotas for its users and deleting files
>|>            to the current dir still adds onto the quota. It is possible to
>|>            discount .# files (I think) but why bother if you can just move them
>|>            to a different dir without a quota or one considerably larger that
>|>            is not affliated with yours.
>
>  As I have pointed out in a previous posting, allowing users to delete files
>into a repository without a quota, and then to restore them, allows users to
>use the deleted-file space as a temporary file archive, unless it is
>constantly watched by the admins to make sure that this does not happen.

        What is stopping people from storing a bunch of stuff in /tmp? That
 doesn't normally get cleared unless the machine is rebooted. 
 I never said that a user should be allowed to have an unlimited quota on
 a trashcan directory. Entomb is owned by charon and you can always supply
 a quota on a person's tomb directory so they cannot delete large numbers of
 files. You can't do that if you delete files to your home dir.
 My system has a 1meg quota. I think this really sucks. If I want to get the
 new version of bash and uncompress and untar it, it takes up alot of space 
 and I don't have much room for much else. But if I must deal with a quota 
 at least I could keep bash on my system for a few days before it was deleted
 if i use entomb.
>
>
>  You would do well to actually look at our software, which is available in
>comp.sources.misc, before making up scenarios that might break it.
>
>% alias rm
>delete
>% alias rmdir
>delete
>% cd tmp
>% ls
>file1  file2  file3
>% rm *
>% cd ..
>% rmdir tmp
>%
>
>In other words, if delete is used as it is intended to be used, replacing both
>rm and rmdir, it does the right thing in the scenario you described.

     so this is what you are telling me if I want to use undelete:
 
 1) I have to put up with .# files
 2) I have to make some alias for ls -a so I don't see .# files
 3) I still have to wait around if I delete large numbers of files and want
    to do an ls -a because the dir is huge.
 4) I have to make rm and rmdir aliases to insure it works right.
 5) I have to run a cron job every night to hunt down these files.
 6) I have to put up with the quota restrictions.
 7) if I really want to delete a file I have to use another command so the 
    stupid .# file is not in my directory. (which is the normal case!)
 
 and for the big one:
 8) I actually have to be an experienced enough user to be able to make all 
    these corrections -- otherwise I could get quite confused in certain 
    instances -- whereas if I used entomb, whether I had knowledge of how it
    worked or not, my daily operations would not be affected.

  if that is what you are telling me, then I say IT's STUPID!

>
>
>-- 
>Jonathan Kamens			              USnail:
>MIT Project Athena				11 Ashford Terrace
>jik at Athena.MIT.EDU				Allston, MA  02134
>Office: 617-253-8085			      Home: 617-782-0710


-- 
>From the Lab of the MaD ScIenTiST:
      
navarra at casbah.acns.nwu.edu