From: wlc@jctaylor.com (William Corcoran)
Subject: [TUHS] rm command
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2018 21:53:26 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <C15B0B7C-EC7E-44E3-ACF2-E8461C2C49E8@jctaylor.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAC0cEp9nXgfjvoDZMuHvbSMuh40Dvkw2pZiYhVLYSdwqoVbNHQ@mail.gmail.com>
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Agreed. Plus, it’s unmistakable that rm meant “remove” when you examine her sister “rmdir.”
I think it’s a bit more interesting to uncover why rm does not remove directories by default thereby obviating the need for rmdir—-especially since the potentially nightmarish incantation of “rm -rf” does include files, folders and just about everything else in between.
Bill Corcoran
On Apr 25, 2018, at 5:36 PM, John P. Linderman <jpl.jpl at gmail.com<mailto:jpl.jpl at gmail.com>> wrote:
Another country heard from.<http://www.tldp.org/LDP/LG/issue49/fischer.html> I doubt the Robert Morris story, given that a command as fundamental as "rm" must have come about very early in the development, and there isn't a pattern of naming commands after their authors.
On Wed, Apr 25, 2018 at 1:22 PM, Eric Blood <winkywooster at gmail.com<mailto:winkywooster at gmail.com>> wrote:
I came across this yesterday:
> Fun fact: according to unsubstantiated UNIX lore, "rm" is NOT short-hand
> for "remove" but rather, it stands for the initials of the developer that wrote
> the original implementation, Robert Morris.
>
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16916565
I was curious if there's any truth to it. I found
http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl and was poking around but
couldn't determine when the rm command came about.
Thoughts?
--
Eric Blood
winkywooster at gmail.com<mailto:winkywooster at gmail.com>
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2018-04-25 21:53 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 17+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2018-04-25 20:22 Eric Blood
2018-04-25 21:23 ` Ralph Corderoy
2018-04-25 21:33 ` John P. Linderman
2018-04-25 21:53 ` William Corcoran [this message]
2018-04-25 21:58 ` Derek Fawcus
2018-04-25 22:09 ` Ralph Corderoy
2018-04-25 22:17 Noel Chiappa
2018-04-27 16:26 ` Dave Horsfall
2018-04-27 16:58 ` Ian Zimmerman
2018-04-27 18:14 ` Steve Nickolas
2018-04-27 18:17 ` Pete Wright
2018-04-28 16:33 ` Michael Kjörling
2018-04-28 18:01 ` Ian Zimmerman
2018-04-28 18:51 ` Derek Fawcus
2018-04-26 2:19 Doug McIlroy
2018-04-26 9:41 ` Ralph Corderoy
2018-04-27 16:42 Noel Chiappa
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