Re: rm patch suggestion

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

On Tue, May 07, 2002 at 05:08:58PM +0200, Oystein Viggen wrote:
> * [Joshua Judson Rosen] 
> > How about an -x/--one-file-system option like cp has?
> 
> Problem is, you never ever want to recurse into directory translators
> belonging to other people,

I can't agree with the `never' in this statement...

> because they are likely to be [...]

... especially when the rationale is based on what is `likely' ;)

`never' sounds so clear and ultimate and rigid;

`likely' sounds vague/mushy.

> People will expect -Rf to as safe from subversion on the Hurd as it is
> in any other Unix like OS.

Right..., which normally includes descending through mountpoints, doesn't it?

> Also, -f is mostly just the opposite of -i,
> so I see no reason why -f should make rm run in an unsafe way.

Oh, of course--I wouldn't expect that -f would cause rm to descend
through mountpoints; I'd expect -R to do that ;)

Whether or not recursive actions should default to going through
mountpoints is debatable, but it seems to be a/the current popular
behaviour:

        cp traverses mountpoints unless -x/--one-file-system is given

        tar traverses mountpoints unless -l/--one-file-system is given

        find traverses mountpoints unless -xdev/-mount is given

        ...

I would expect other programs to behave similarly.

The `act differently for translators beloning to other users' proposal
is interesting, and might warrant an additional toggle-flag....

There's a slew of similarly-minded behaviour-tweaks that one might
want at a given moment, though--one might also want to filter based on
the specific translator set on a node (e.g.: go into nodes translated
by /hurd/ext2fs, but don't go into nodes translated by /hurd/firmlink
or /hurd/ftpfs or /hurd/tarfs)--and these are probably applicable to
any utility that operates on directory-trees/-webs....

I don't normally expect such fine-grained control built-into
individual utilities, though--I usually figure `that's what find and
xargs are for'.