Re: Suggestion for rmdir

[Eric Blake]

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According to Adam Jimerson on 12/26/2008 4:14 PM:
> When removing a non empty directory with 'rmdir' I think the
> "--ignore-fail-on-non-empty" argument is over the edge.  That is a lot
> of typing when rm --recursive can do the same thing, and it is easier to
> remember as well.  Maybe make the "--ignore-fail-on-non-empty" something
> shorter like force or even recursive will work.

Thanks for the report.  However, coreutils use GNU getopt semantics, where
unambiguous abbreviations of long options are recognized.  Therefore, you
need not type the full name, and can get by with:

rmdir --i

until such day that we introduce another long option whose name begins
with i.  Meanwhile, your claim that 'rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty' is
equivalent to 'rm -r' is false; a recursive 'rm' deletes regular files to
cause the directory to become empty and thus removable, while 'rmdir' only
removes directories that were already empty or contain only empty
subdirectories also being removed.

- --
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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