06-03-2014
That's why I explained how I interpreted the original post, but you're right, I was not clear enough.
I assumed that the third party tool issues
rm -rf /* if the user of that tool does not provide any arguments. ONLY this case is catched. The user of that tool may not have any knowledge that he is working on an UNIX system at all because he only sees that tools frontend and may not know what effect is caused by not giving any arguments.
For all other cases I'll quote you:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Cragun
UNIX utilities are there to help you get a job done. If you use them correctly, they can do wonderful things for you. If you tell them to do stupid things, you'll get what you asked for.
A user who issues the commands you mentioned in the last reply most likely knows what he is doing - that would not be an accidental use of the rm command.
Edit again: thanks for pointing out the issues in your last paragraph.
In my tests (using GNU bash, version 4.1.5(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)) the script compains correctly when there are files in the root directory that contain space or tab characters in their names.
I'm not sure if the race condition can be entirely avoided (given my assumtions about the problem are correct).
The issue with whitespaces in the operand list is caused by my lack of quoting. The last line should read
/bin/rm "$@".
Last edited by cero; 06-03-2014 at 08:26 AM..
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LEARN ABOUT FREEBSD
introduction
INTRO(1) BSD General Commands Manual INTRO(1)
NAME
intro -- introduction to general commands (tools and utilities)
DESCRIPTION
Section one of the manual contains most of the commands which comprise the BSD user environment. Some of the commands included in section
one are text editors, command shell interpreters, searching and sorting tools, file manipulation commands, system status commands, remote
file copy commands, mail commands, compilers and compiler tools, formatted output tools, and line printer commands.
All commands set a status value upon exit which may be tested to see if the command completed normally. Traditionally, the value 0 signifies
successful completion of the command, while a value >0 indicates an error. Some commands attempt to describe the nature of the failure by
using exit codes as defined in sysexits(3), while others simply set the status to an arbitrary value >0 (typically 1).
SEE ALSO
apropos(1), man(1), intro(2), intro(3), sysexits(3), intro(4), intro(5), intro(6), intro(7), security(7), intro(8), intro(9)
Tutorials in the UNIX User's Manual Supplementary Documents.
HISTORY
The intro manual page appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.
BSD
October 21, 2001 BSD