Even though I have a good reason to do it, typing rm -rf * always makes me upset.
This was written by jeremy. Posted on Sunday, November 2, 2008, at 3:10 pm. Filed under My Life. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.
OK. On any UNIX system, which includes Linux, BSD, and all derivatives thereof such as Apple’s OS X, rm is the command for strong is the command for remove. The -rf tells it to remove files recursively and to force it to do so, and not to ask you at any point in the process “Are you really sure you meant to delete this one?” The * tells it to remove everything in the directory you’re in.
So, in short, this is the command that can completely wreck your computer. There are good reasons to type it sometimes, but if you type it in the wrong directory (say, the bottommost one) you can completely hose your system.
So, even though I know what I’m doing, whenever I have occasion to type it, I get the sinking feeling that I’m about to cross the streams.
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I can’t figure out if I more so want to know what it means, or if I’m just interested in what makes you upset.
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Bridget Callahan »
OK. On any UNIX system, which includes Linux, BSD, and all derivatives thereof such as Apple’s OS X,
rmis the command for strong is the command for remove. The-rftells it to remove files recursively and to force it to do so, and not to ask you at any point in the process “Are you really sure you meant to delete this one?” The*tells it to remove everything in the directory you’re in.So, in short, this is the command that can completely wreck your computer. There are good reasons to type it sometimes, but if you type it in the wrong directory (say, the bottommost one) you can completely hose your system.
So, even though I know what I’m doing, whenever I have occasion to type it, I get the sinking feeling that I’m about to cross the streams.
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