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[z4ph0d]

UNIX is like a knife. You need to know what you're doing, and you have to keep the blade pointing away frow you. Recently I was removing a file from on of my partitions. Accidentaly I thought I was inside a directory when typing rm -r *. I erased my entire OS9 disk. This was 3 weeks ago. That just goes to show I might never need OS9 again!

 

[simX]

Heh, you don't have to use the command line if you have to, but when you do you need to be EXTRA careful.

I accidentally erased my Mac OS X's "System" folder on accident, and I had to reinstall Mac OS X. Luckily all of my preferences were saved in my Users folder.

When it comes down to it, though, it's the user's problem when you do something like that. UNIX is dumb and doesn't ask for confirmation, so it's really your fault for doing something like this.

I'm not trying to be harsh, but it's not OS X's fault.

 

[roger]

This is where using alias commands are very useful in command line UNIX:

Instead of using rm, create a command that prompts where you really want to continue (it can show the path, etc.) and then it invokes the 'rm' command, or even better, it moves the files in question to a homemade trash can, which can be emptied at will.

R.

 

[z4ph0d]

Sorry guys, had a typo there... What I meant was I won't have to use OS9 again!! d-oh, I'm such a jerk. I've edited the post so it's correct now. I'm not against OSX by any means.. I love it, I was just stating how it in my experience has made OS9 redundant

 

[nkuvu]

you don't have to use the command line if you have to

Um, what?

Believe me, z4ph0d, there are plenty of worse things you could have done. Like force yourself to work in OS 9 because you deleted the OS X critical system files.

For anyone who wants the system to prompt you with a bazillion "Are you sure? You wanna delete this file?" messages, you can use the -i flag on rm. So you don't have to have some complicated scheme like roger was talking about. Not that I am saying that it's bad, but there's already a built in function to do this, so why re-invent fire?

I like the fact that rm doesn't just put things into the trash can. I dislike that behavior a lot. One problem is that you get users who don't empty the trash can, and before you know it you have no HD space left...

 

[chenly]

z4ph0d, don't EVER use <<rm>> with wildcards, e.g., <<*>>.