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Aucbvax.4108 fa.unix-wizards utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!unix-wizards Tue Sep 29 15:17:55 1981 'rm' and metacharacters >From decvax!duke!unc!smb@Berkeley Tue Sep 29 15:08:24 1981 In-real-life: Steven M. Bellovin Location: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Mode: flaming

While I don't agree with some that the operating system should let you do any damn-fool thing you please to yourself, having 'rm' look at the uninterpreted command line would be a big mistake. First of all, the greatest virtue of the shell's file-name expansion is that it IS universal -- individual commands don't have to do it for themselves, and the interpretation is invariant. (In that light, incidentally, I consider it a bug that '>file*' doesn't work.) Second, there are enough other metacharacters that can't easily be passed along untinterpreted. For example, what sense does it make to pass the csh's ! along, or a > or pipe symbol? These can be equally troubling to people, and aren't easily defended against. My vote is to stick with consistency, and let 'rm' continue to check for read-protected files, the way it does now.

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