fixing rm * (was: Worm/Passwords)

[Richard A. O'Keefe]

In article <1248 at atari.UUCP> achar at atari.UUCP (Alan Char) writes:
>In article <727 at quintus.UUCP> ok at quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>|One answer, of course, would be to have a
>|	GLOBASK=rm:rmdir
>|shell variable, so that one could put
>|	GLOBASK=a.rm:$GLOBASK
>|in ones .profile.  (Did I just make a constructive suggestion?  Oops.)
>
>GLOBASK is not that different from expandcheck.  In fact,
>setting GLOBASK=<all commands> is exactly the same as setting
>expandcheck=1 modulo the prompt text.

No it isn't, because it is not *possible* to set GLOBASK=<all commands>.
That's an open set.  (The set of commands accessible through my $PATH at
the moment is 661, and that's after I pruned my $PATH.)  It's also quite
a different perspective; it's quite pointless to limit
	echo * | wc -w
which expandcheck would do, whereas the GLOBASK approach explicitly
identifies only the believed-dangerous commands.

I am not seriously proposing GLOBASK; just pointing out that more focussed
approaches than expandcheck are possible.