Protection from "rm *" (summary)

[Andy Oram]

I didn't want to jump in and be a wet blanket, because this thread turned up
some neat tricks, but I don't think nobody has mentioned this yet -- really, a
rogue rm command is the least of your worries.  I myself am much more likely
to wipe out my work by:

	Moving a file to a directory that already has a file with the same
	name (yes, I know that mv and cp have -i too, but you can spend your
	life disabling utilities' standard practices).

	Writing out a file that I've munged, or where I accidentally deleted
	90% without realizing it, because the part that showed up on my screen
	looked fine.

	Getting "make" confused and having it think your source is a target,
	and removing it because an error occurred.

	etc., etc.

So let me act like a school-marm for just a moment, and say that the minimal
protection you need is the classic protection:  daily back-ups and source
control.  The most state-of-the-art solution I know of would be version
control, like Emacs implements for edited files, and like a certain operating
system I dare not mention without being laughed at implements across the whole
system.

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Andrew Oram                            Concurrent Computer Corporation
(I don't represent Concurrent; this message represents my own opinion)

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