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I think the alternative being suggested is that rm shouldn't accept a string that magically can reference anything in the filesystem... In our capability-based

I think the alternative being suggested is that rm shouldn't accept a string that magically can reference anything in the filesystem... In our capability-based shell scripting language Shill (shill-lang.org) for example, you could prevent this sort of bug by giving the script a capability for just the diaspora_home directory, and deriving the child directories from that capability. (Of course, you still need to make sure you pass in the right directory in the first place.)

tremon 9y ago
I think the alternative being suggested is that rm shouldn't accept a string that magically can reference anything in the filesystem... That suggestion fails to grasp the basics of Unix shells however: parameter expansion as well as globbing is performed by the shell, rm "sees" nothing but fully-expanded paths.
rwmj 9y ago
Coreutils 'rm' has a --preserve-root option (the default) which does exactly this. https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/Treating-_002f-specially.html https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/Trea...