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

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Message #20 received at 12339 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: "Alan Curry" <pacman-cu <at> kosh.dhis.org>
To: bob <at> proulx.com (Bob Proulx)
Cc: Linda Walsh <coreutils <at> tlinx.org>, 12339 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#12339: Bug: rm -fr . doesn't dir depth first deletion yet it
	is
Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2012 03:17:44 -0500 (GMT+5)

Bob Proulx writes:
> 
> 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.

Linux has the ability to actually remove a directory that is empty but still
referenced as the cwd of some process. This ability is non-traditional
(my fuzzy memory says it showed up some time in the 2.2 or 2.4 era). It's
worth considering whether this change should be reflected by a relaxation of
rm's traditional behavior.

rm -rf $PWD, meaning basically the same thing as rm -rf ., works, and leaves
you in a directory so empty that ls -a reports no "." or ".." entries, and no
file can be created in the current directory. (open and stat and chdir still
work on . and .. though. They're magic.)

-- 
Alan Curry

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