'rm' and metacharacters

[utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!unix-wizards]

>From decvax!duke!unc!smb at Berkeley Tue Sep 29 15:08:24 1981
In-real-life: Steven M. Bellovin
Location: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Mode: flaming

While I don't agree with some that the operating system should let
you do any damn-fool thing you please to yourself, having 'rm' look
at the uninterpreted command line would be a big mistake.  First of
all, the greatest virtue of the shell's file-name expansion is that
it IS universal -- individual commands don't have to do it for
themselves, and the interpretation is invariant.  (In that light,
incidentally, I consider it a bug that '>file*' doesn't work.)
Second, there are enough other metacharacters that can't easily
be passed along untinterpreted.  For example, what sense does it
make to pass the csh's ! along, or a > or pipe symbol?  These can
be equally troubling to people, and aren't easily defended against.
My vote is to stick with consistency, and let 'rm' continue to check
for read-protected files, the way it does now.