Re: rm(1) bug, possibly serious

On 9/25/07, Oliver Fromme <olli@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Torfinn Ingolfsen wrote:
> Oliver Fromme wrote:
>
> > $ cd /tmp
> > $ mkdir -p foo/var
> > $ cd foo/bar
> > $ rm -rf ../
> > rm: ../: Invalid argument
> > $ rm -rf ../
> > $
> >
[...]
> Quick testing here:
> [...]
> Ok, I think it is a bug.

Yes, I think so, too.

By the way, an additional confusion is that ".." and "../"
are handled differently. Specifying ".." always leads to
this message:

rm: "." and ".." may not be removed

and nothing is actually removed. It is confusing that
adding a slash leads to a different error message _and_
removal of the contents of the parent directory. Clearly
a POLA violation.

Maybe. But I expect that the behavior for "rm -rf .." is there so that
things don't get REALLY astonishing when you do "rm -rf *". Having a
different behavior for "rm -rf ../" may have been intentional on
someone's part so you can override the protection if you really want
to.

- Bob
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