Re: Scripting Additions: Embracing the Horror of Unix
Re: Scripting Additions: Embracing the Horror of Unix
- Subject: Re: Scripting Additions: Embracing the Horror of Unix
- From: garbanzito <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2002 20:36:49 -0700
at 2002 02 01, 15:08 -0800, they whom i call Christopher Nebel wrote:
On Friday, February 1, 2002, at 02:45 PM, Michael Sullivan wrote:
Steve suggested that the recursive form could be dangerous if you
have links. ...
% man rm
...
The rm utility removes symbolic links, not the files referenced by the
links.
it's hard to have confidence in that when 1) it doesn't
mention hard links or aliases, 2) it doesn't talk about
whether it *follows* links when traversing directories with
-R, and 3) some other man pages are missing some Mac OS
X-specific info.
my original caution was based on a casual report from
another person. i did a simple (not exhaustive) test. in my
test, rm -R did not follow links or aliases to folders, nor
did it delete the original of a linked or aliased file. so
it *appear* safe in that respect (no guarantees).
--
steve harley email@hidden