On 11/20/2013 05:03 PM, Bernhard Voelker wrote:
> On 11/20/2013 02:44 PM, Eric Blake wrote:
>> On 11/19/2013 11:45 PM, Bernhard Voelker wrote:
>>> Maybe "cannot remove directory" is a bit weak - it's more like
>>> "refusing to remove dot|dot-dot|root directory".
>>
>> Indeed, a clearer error message would be possible.
> 
> What about the following?
> 
>   $ src/rm -r src/.
>   src/rm: refusing to remove '.' or '..' directory: skipping 'src/.'

That helps.  But I'm also starting to think we should add a new long
option --no-preserve-dot, similar to how --no-preserve-root can be used
to work around the restriction.  Then people that want to can create an
alias or other wrapper around rm to get the non-nanny behavior, while
the default behavior still complies with POSIX.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org