David Haller wrote:
If you don't want to use 'rm' in the way it was intended to (see above), then just do not use it.
No No No... You just go change POSIX... ... That's what some people did. You used to be able to delete all files in a directory (AND NOT the directory) VERY safely by using cd "dir" && rm -fr . --- You also used to be able to shut off all messages (ignoring errors with permissions, etc), using "-f". But both of those have been changed . In fact, there is no way to get rm to remove all files in a directory and not also remove the directory without using some 'helper' (like shell or find). I.e. "rm *" relies on the shell to expand things, BUT posix changed things there recently as well. "echo *" used to not show hidden files. Now it does, by default (unless you toggle an option in bash to undo it). If you want to safely delete all files under a dir on the same file system? I.e. like "rm -fr --onefilesystem .", don't think that "rm -fr --onefilesystem *" will due the same thing. It won't. Of course you can still use "cp -a foo ." and end up with dir 'foo' in dot, vs. "cp -a foo/. ." to get all contents of foo in ".", but you cannot use rm -fr foo/. Of course "rm -r foo" may delete "foo" but not it's contents, if foo was a symlink (just like ls foo => gives foo@") or even "ls foo/" => "foo/@" if the '/' was given when creating the symlink. But you _could_ get the contents using "foo/." -- but not as of about 2 years ago when POSIX 2008's changes came into force in 2010 release of SUSE10.2 or .1 (wasn't in 10). So if you don't like the way things work and think it is not safe enough -- you can just get the command changed and make unix more like Windows... ;-( -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org