Paul Eggert wrote:

On 09/04/2012 11:58 PM, Linda A. Walsh wrote:

   I'm not talking for interactive use... I'm talking for use in a script
that might run on systems that are not mine -- so I can't rely on shell settings.


Yes you can.  Just start the script with "#!/bin/sh", as usual.
When invoked that way, Bash and other shells are POSIX-compliant
in this area.

To what level of posix... if they are compliant to the original level
then they might have the original behavior that allowed rm -r . to work.

if they are the 2003 version, then a different way, .. bleh.

I overly worry about things that don't occur, but get caught
by things I didn't worry enough about. So it doesn't really
matter. I just preferred simplicity to the ever changing
posix.