Re: Wishing rmdir had a prompt
On 2019-09-02 17:22, Bernhard Voelker wrote:
Just recently I've been asked (off-list) why src/true.c needs to have
80+ lines while 3 lines would be enough.
This piqued my curiosity. Obvious comment header, localization, and
--{help,version} fluff aside, I was not aware of the GNU-specific fringe
case, outlined on the info page as steps to force true to produce a false
return value. It has been added to my list of party gags.
Re: Wishing rmdir had a prompt
On 9/11/19 10:29 AM, Lady Aleena wrote: I thank everyone who got involved with my little wish. I did not mean for it to explode like this. I am entirely comfortable letting the whole idea drop since there appears to be little to no support for it. I was just an idle wish that crossed my mind that I wanted to share. Again, thank you for reading it and taking the time to respond. I don't think this discussion "exploded". Instead, I think asking for such little wishes like you did is how free software works: one has an idea, other share their thoughts about it. And some of such ideas are considered valuable or some even cool - and easy and overall worthwhile to add - and therefore make it as a new feature into new versions of the software. In other cases like this, the discussion leads to a consent that existing functionality or alternatives are deemed good enough. So in this sense: thanks for asking. ;-) Have a nice day, Berny
Re: Wishing rmdir had a prompt
I thank everyone who got involved with my little wish. I did not mean for it to explode like this. I am entirely comfortable letting the whole idea drop since there appears to be little to no support for it. I was just an idle wish that crossed my mind that I wanted to share. Again, thank you for reading it and taking the time to respond. Have a very nice day! Lady Aleena On 2019-09-02 11:22, Bernhard Voelker wrote: On 9/2/19 10:03 AM, Sami Kerola wrote: [...] I don't see any problem adding --interactive long only option. a) Bloat: Apart from the --parents option, rmdir(1) is just a simple wrapper around rmdir(2). Just recently I've been asked (off-list) why src/true.c needs to have 80+ lines while 3 lines would be enough. b) Alternatives: The case is trivial enough to have some little prompt wrapper around it. E.g. a bit contrived but works: $ xargs -p rmdir DIR c) As Kaz already wrote: it's easy enough to re-create an empty directory which has been deleted accidentally. d) My personal opinion: I'm not in favor of those "do you really want to XYZ?" questions - especially in the case one just explicitly told the tool exactly to "do XYZ". Similarly, one could argument why not to add it to sleep, kill, cat, and so on. Have a nice day, Berny
Re: Wishing rmdir had a prompt
On 2019-09-02 01:03, Sami Kerola wrote: I am not a maintainer, but I don't see any problem adding --interactive long only option. Getting a short option may clash with future posix requirement, so I believe they are not handed out without really good reasons. Fear not; POSIX standardization is not ignorant of significant implementations like those from GNU. For example, here is a literal quote from Issue 7 (2018) POSIX's awk page: "The undefined behavior resulting from NULs in extended regular expressions allows future extensions for the GNU gawk program to process binary data." https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/awk.html "GNU -> GNU Now (mentioned in) Unix" :)
Re: Wishing rmdir had a prompt
On 9/2/19 10:03 AM, Sami Kerola wrote: [...] I don't see any problem adding --interactive long only option. a) Bloat: Apart from the --parents option, rmdir(1) is just a simple wrapper around rmdir(2). Just recently I've been asked (off-list) why src/true.c needs to have 80+ lines while 3 lines would be enough. b) Alternatives: The case is trivial enough to have some little prompt wrapper around it. E.g. a bit contrived but works: $ xargs -p rmdir DIR
Re: Wishing rmdir had a prompt
On Mon, 2 Sep 2019 at 05:50, Kaz Kylheku (Coreutils) <962-396-1...@kylheku.com> wrote: > > On 2019-09-01 17:50, Leslie S Satenstein via GNU coreutils General > Discussion wrote: > > rmdir -i > > I don't see this in a fairly recent GNU Coreutils 8.28 installation. > Must be very new? I think '-i, --interactive' was more of a proposal what option is needed than feedback how use command. Currently implemented options are below. http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/tree/src/rmdir.c#n56 > There is some justification for such a thing. Though it may seem that > accidental > deletion of empty directories is easy to restore by recreating them, > that does not > put the file system back in the pre-deleted state. The modification > timestamps of > parent directories are tweaked, and new empty directories come up with > their own > modification timestamps as well as different inode numbers, permissions, > group and user > ownerships and such. There is no substitute to not deleting something; > what comes close > is recovering it from a backup. Unrelated to this request there's been times when I wish tar would have a way to 'extract' only meta-data, such as permissions and ownership, but not update file content. This would be handy when wanting to recover from accidental sudo chown -R /usr/ run or something of that sort. While on it being able to create tar file that contains only meta info would make permission revert quite interesting, and hopefully lightweight. But that is a totally new file format and miles away off topic what was requested originally. So let me add my two pennies to that discussion. > prompt me before removals I am not a maintainer, but I don't see any problem adding --interactive long only option. Getting a short option may clash with future posix requirement, so I believe they are not handed out without really good reasons. -- Sami Kerola http://www.iki.fi/kerolasa/
Re: Wishing rmdir had a prompt
On 2019-09-01 17:50, Leslie S Satenstein via GNU coreutils General Discussion wrote: rmdir -i I don't see this in a fairly recent GNU Coreutils 8.28 installation. Must be very new? There is some justification for such a thing. Though it may seem that accidental deletion of empty directories is easy to restore by recreating them, that does not put the file system back in the pre-deleted state. The modification timestamps of parent directories are tweaked, and new empty directories come up with their own modification timestamps as well as different inode numbers, permissions, group and user ownerships and such. There is no substitute to not deleting something; what comes close is recovering it from a backup.
Re: Wishing rmdir had a prompt
rmdir -i Regards Leslie Leslie Satenstein Montréal Québec, Canada On Sunday, September 1, 2019, 7:38:28 p.m. GMT-4, Lady Aleena wrote: Hello. I would love to see a -i added to rmdir to prompt me before removals of empty directories like rm has. It would give me another moment to think "Do I really want to remove this?". This is just a wishful thought. Thank you for reading, Lady Aleena
