Re: rm -f and unexecutable directories

[Ed Avis]

On Sat, 8 Nov 2003, Jim Meyering wrote:

>>    -F, --really-force
>>            As --force but also change permissions if necessary.
>
>It's feasible.
>I'm not enthusiastic about this, but not strongly opposed either.

A few years ago there was a project called 'The Dammit Patch' to add a
--dammit flag to ln mv and rm.  I never downloaded a copy and now it
has disappeared off the web.  But it might have done something like
chmodding directories to remove them.

>Bear in mind that even with such an option, rm may still be unable
>to remove a file you own due to e.g., an ACL, attributes a la
>chattr,

I expect that as such things are found they could be added to the -F
code, so it becomes a general 'do everything possible to remove the
file'.

>or being on file system that's mounted read-only.

Hmm, well I wouldn't expect rm to go so far as remounting the
filesystem ;-).

-- 
Ed Avis <address@hidden>