Protection from the dreaded "rm -fr /"

[Max Laier]

On Saturday 02 October 2004 13:22, Ceri Davies wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 02, 2004 at 11:23:52AM +0200, Max Laier wrote:
> > [ Sorry to be so negative ... ]
> >
> > At very least you should consider to error out silently as POSIX requires
> > "-f" to be silent. Other than that you should really look into the
> > standards and what they way about rm and friends.
>
> Are you sure?  From the RATIONALE section of
> http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/rm.html:
>
>     "It is less clear that error messages regarding files that cannot be
>      unlinked (removed) should be suppressed. Although this is historical
>      practice, this volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 does not permit the -f
>      option to suppress such messages."

Misread - I stand corrected.

> > I am not a fan of providing seat belts like this. People concerned about
> > this, can "alias rm 'rm -i'" etc. etc. Others have commented like this
> > ...
> >
> > If you still have to make this change, make it tuneable with a
> > environment variable (and make it default to off).
>
> I'd prefer that too.
>
> Ceri

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