Warning about rm

[tupper at wanginst.UUCP]

Today I ran the following command:

	rm -r /student/tupper/.dead/.*

I was trying to remove alot of files with names like .signature, .login, .etc.
The shell expanded my wild card to include /student/tupper/.dead/. and
(this is the important part -->) /student/tupper/.dead/.. (that's "dot-dot")!

Now rm cleverly makes sure you don't remove "..", but it does not check for
".." at the end of a path name (it does strcmp of filename against "..").

Thus rm, recursivly removed /student/tupper/.dead/.. , which happens to
be my home directory (/student/tupper).

While I wait for the operator to restore my most of my account, I thought I
would pass my experience on for the benefit of others (I've already read
news).