On Mon, 2011-02-28 at 20:01 -0600, Larry Brower wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA512 > > On 02/28/2011 06:54 PM, Steve Ellis wrote: > > On 2/28/2011 3:23 PM, Larry Brower wrote: > >> > >> I would say this all depends on the application being invoked and would > >> still say it is bad to just use * as opposed to say ./* > >> > >> I can't count the number of people Ive seen do things like rm -rf * in a > >> directory and it recursively started working on / and /bin etc... > > Not to be a pest, but if you worry about '*' expanding to include > > dotfiles, then why do you think that './*' is safe? Furthermore, '*' > > expansion is handled by the shell, not the application--in other words, > > dotglob rules the day. > > > > The '*' there will just as well include dotfiles (i.e., it won't unless > > dotglob is set as another poster indicated). I definitely agree that > > caution is warranted when using '*' in any command that can do horrible > > things to your files, especially for things like 'rm -rf', but don't > > travel under the misconception that './*' is going to save your > > bacon--because it won't. > > > > -se > > > ./ explicitly specifies the CWD so what is your basis for saying it > wont? While I will admit there could be other factors at play for rm > recursively working on the systems Ive seen it happen on I can't say > with certainty that there was as files like /etc/profile and /etc/bashrc > were already removed by the time I had to work on the issue. You're confusing path searching, which ./ will block (e.g. run ./ls instead of ls) with filename expansion, which ./ will have no effect on. If you do "cd /; rm -rf *" then bad things will happen. If you do "cd /; rm -rf ./*" then exactly the same bad things will happen. poc -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
