Subject: bug#12339: Bug: rm -fr . doesn't dir depth first deletion yet it is documented to do so.

From: "Voelker, Bernhard" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2012 08:24:51 +0000

Bob Proulx wrote (Monday, September 03, 2012 9:51 AM)

> Jim Meyering wrote:
> > Could you be thinking of some other rm?
> > Coreutils' rm has rejected that for a long time:
> > ...
> > POSIX requires rm to reject any attempt to delete an explicitly specified
> > "." or ".." argument (or any argument whose last component is one of those):
>
> Hmm...  Wow.  I decided to check HP-UX 11.11, a now rather old release
> from twelve years ago in 2000, the oldest easily available to me, and
> got this:
>
>   $ /usr/bin/rm -rf .
>   rm: cannot remove .. or .
>
> So I guess GNU coreutils is in good company with traditional Unix
> systems!  It has definitely been that way for a long time.

Seconded!
SunOS 5.9:

   $ rm -rf .
   $ rm -r .
   rm of . is not allowed

Have a nice day,
Berny