It’s actually harder to detect that. The * is expanded before the arguments are sent to rm, so it just sees a list of directories like /bin /usr /dev /sbin /home and so on.
You could implement logic to detect that case, but at that point you’re just playing whackamole.
If you try to put in safeguards for every possible system-nuking command someone with root rights might type, you’ll never get done.
When you’re typing “rm -rf” as root, you should immediately stop and triple-check what you’re doing.
Cause either there’s a safer way to do what you want to do, or what you’re trying isn’t a good idea in the first place.
(Even when you want to delete lots of stuff in root space, a better way is to use find. You can use it to look for and list the files you want to delete. After you’ve checked its output and verified that those are the correct files, just cursor-up to get the same findquery again and add --delete at the end)
Why doesn’t rm -rf /* also require —no-preserve-root? That seems just as easy to type accidentally and will just nuke your system without asking
It’s actually harder to detect that. The
*is expanded before the arguments are sent torm, so it just sees a list of directories like/bin /usr /dev /sbin /homeand so on.You could implement logic to detect that case, but at that point you’re just playing whackamole.
I believe zsh catches this and makes you confirm.
Well, that or one of my plugins, I’m not sure.
Can confirm. Accidentally did that a few weeks ago.
If you try to put in safeguards for every possible system-nuking command someone with root rights might type, you’ll never get done.
When you’re typing “rm -rf” as root, you should immediately stop and triple-check what you’re doing.
Cause either there’s a safer way to do what you want to do, or what you’re trying isn’t a good idea in the first place.
(Even when you want to delete lots of stuff in root space, a better way is to use
find. You can use it to look for and list the files you want to delete. After you’ve checked its output and verified that those are the correct files, just cursor-up to get the samefindquery again and add --delete at the end)