Re: rm(1) bug, possibly serious

On Tue, 25 Sep 2007, Oliver Fromme wrote:

Note that the command "rm -rf ../" was entered twice.
The first time I got an error message (and exit code 1),
the second time it apparently succeeded.

Check the man page for rm:

-f Attempt to remove the files without prompting for confirma-
tion, regardless of the file's permissions. If the file does
not exist, do not display a diagnostic message or modify the
exit status to reflect an error.

That's what's happening the second time through. The first time, your
current directory is getting removed (so ../ won't refer to a real
directory the second time around). The bug is really in rm(1)'s initial
diagnostic message.



--
jan grant, ISYS, University of Bristol. http://www.bris.ac.uk/
Tel +44 (0)117 3317661 http://ioctl.org/jan/
We thought time travel was impossible. But that was now and this is then.
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