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Re: a smarter rm
From: |
Eric Blake |
Subject: |
Re: a smarter rm |
Date: |
Tue, 23 Apr 2013 18:02:22 -0600 |
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Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130402 Thunderbird/17.0.5 |
On 04/23/2013 01:52 AM, Diggory Hardy wrote:
> Dear list,
>
> I have been playing with some changes in behaviour to make 'rm' smarter /
> friendlier. (See my_rm in [1] for an implementation.)
>
> [1]: https://github.com/dhardy/scripts "my_rm"
>
> I'm not quite sure if I dare suggest changes in the behaviour of such a
> standard and long-existing tool, but adding a -s ("smart") option (or
> possibly
> adjusting the -i behaviour) to do the following really seems to make it nicer
> to use:
Have you tried using the existing rm -I instead of rm -i?
At this point, burning a new short option -s is undesirable unless there
is an existing implementation that has already used it for the same
purpose. Adding a long option might be reasonable, but only if we think
the feature is useful. Even then, it would take a while before that new
option percolates onto enough machines for you to assume it exists by
default, at which point
>
> 1. Don't prompt about actions which can easily be undone (assuming an "ls -l"
> before hand): delete symbolic links and empty directories without question.
This is already relatively easy to do without bloating 'rm', by using
specific options to find (here, assuming GNU find extensions):
find -type d -empty -exec rmdir {} \; -o -type l -exec rm {} \;
> 2. Prompt before other actions (deleting files or recursively deleting
> directories)
Isn't that what -i/-I already does, once the easy files are out of the
way? And again, you could set up a find expression that filters out the
easy files and passes the remaining files to rm -i.
> 3. Don't require rewriting (using rmdir or -rf)
I don't follow what you are asking for on this step.
>
> Thoughts? Can a small improvement which shouldn't affect most scripts win out
> over tradition?
>
> Please CC me, I'm not on the list.
That's list policy :)
>
> Diggory
>
>
>
--
Eric Blake eblake redhat com +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org
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- a smarter rm, Diggory Hardy, 2013/04/23
- Re: a smarter rm,
Eric Blake <=