Tricks for Making rm Safer (Unix Power Tools, 3rd Edition)

14.4. Tricks for Making rm Safer

Summary Box

Here's a summary of ways to protect yourself from accidentally deleting files:

Use rm -i, possibly as an alias (Section 14.8).

Make rm -i less painful (Section 14.7).

Write a "delete" script that moves "deleted" files to a temporary directory (Section 14.9).

tcsh has an rmstar variable that makes the shell ask for confirmation when you type something like rm *. In zsh, this protection is automatic unless you set the RM_STAR_SILENT shell option to stop it.

Use revision control (Section 39.4).

Make your own backups, as explained in Section 38.3.

Prevent deletion (or renaming or creating) of files by making the directory (not necessarily the files in it!) unwritable (Section 50.2).

If you want to delete with wild abandon, use rm -f (Section 14.10).

-- ML