17 Dec
2011
17 Dec
'11
10:32 a.m.
On 12/17/2011 3:33 AM, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 07:22:02PM -0800, Josh Dersch
wrote:
Yeah, that was kind of the point. I honestly don't care about people's
attitude about "nagging" in edge cases and I'm happy to change Unix
behavior for these cases.
Let's start with the "rm *"
example. "rm *" is a particular
invokation of rm that isn't commonly used -- it's an exceptional
case that someone really wants to delete all files in a particular
directory. Is it annoying to anyone to either answer "y" to an "Are
you sure?" prompt or type in "rm -y *" to autoconfirm in these few
cases?
Bad idea, breaks the generic user interface assumption that the machine
just goes and does what it is being told instead of nagging you with
"are you really sure?" prompts in the default case.
Unix standard: the training wheels are off, the user is assumed to know WTF
he/she/it is doing. If you want the training wheels, switch them on
explicitly, but don't annoy the experts all the time. ;-)
Again, I disagree with this. *EVERYONE* gets screwed by this behavior
from time to time. "Experts" don't get
annoyed "all the time" by this
(quick question -- how often in a given
week do you run "rm *" ? How
much longer would it take you to append "-y" to those invocations?)
In that case of rm, the "training wheels on" mode is already available, just
use "rm -i".
I don't think it works that way. Honestly, this is the attitude I'm
talking about that I think needs correction -- the attitude that "real"
Unix users never make mistakes and if they do, they *deserve* it. It's
computer-based Stockholm Syndrome as far as I'm concerned...
- Josh
Even if it is slightly more work, think of the
tradeoff
that's being made: you're saving every Unix user the pain of
accidentally screwing themselves via a typo -- and just as evidenced
by responses on this list, *everyone* (well, mostly everyone) has
managed to do this at least once or knows someone who has.
Live and learn. And
pain is a very powerful mnemonic fixative ;-)