On Wed, May 11, 2005 at 03:24:58PM +1000, Rick Welykochy wrote:
> In C, one wouldn't (I hope) call a function and then ignore possible
> error return, i.e.
> [ .... ]
> So why eschew the same when programming in the shell?
>
> while read name; do
> if cd $name; then
> rm -fvr *
> cd ..
> rmdir $name
> else
> echo 1>&2 "skipping directory $name: could not cd"
> fi
> done < studentlist
Don't stop there! The defensive programmer
might also
1. quote vars ie. "$name"
2. ensure all vars are actually define before use i.e. set -u
3. check the return of all commands, i.e. set -e
4. perhaps have a trap ERR ' ... ' because of 3.
e.g. trap 'echo >&2 Internal error $0 line $LINENO' ERR
5. use a real language :-)
btw, the rmdir is not going to work, because rm * is not going to
remove dotfiles.
Now the tempation might be to do "rm -rf .*". But that
will remove ".." and much unhappiness will ensue.
Not doing rm -something* is good advice.
Matt
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