Re: Feature request: rm should implement option -p, --parents

[Guido Flohr]

Pádraig Brady wrote:
> But I'd be worried about using rm -p generally, as I might delete an
> empty dir that didn't belong to me. Though if passed relative
> paths that would be alleviated I suppose.

It's trivial to protect a precious directory, by dropping a file in that 
directory.  Besides, not creating missing directory levels in an 
installer is poor practice, isn't it?

> The package above should really be calling rmdir -p on relative dirs
> created previously created with install -d or mkdir -p.

Sure, that's debatable.  But I'm not talking about uninstall issues 
only.  Think of the example with the tarball for example.

I think the assumption that an empty directory just wastes an inode is 
relatively safe.  And nobody would be forced to use that option.

> I'll think some more about this,

Thanks. :-)

Cheers,
Guido
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