Re: a smarter rm

[Eric Blake]

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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