I'd be very wary of relying on that. It doesn't account for when you are not in the directory which contain the files your are deleting. oracle:~/adl/tmp> for i in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7; do echo 1 > file$i; done oracle:~/adl/tmp> touch -- -i oracle:~/adl/tmp> rm -f * rm: remove regular file `file1'? oracle:~/adl/tmp> rm -f * rm: remove regular file `file1'? n rm: remove regular file `file2'? n rm: remove regular file `file3'? n rm: remove regular file `file4'? n rm: remove regular file `file5'? n rm: remove regular file `file6'? n rm: remove regular file `file7'? n oracle:~/adl/tmp> n bash: n: command not found oracle:~/adl/tmp> cd .. oracle:~/adl> rm -f tmp/* oracle:~/adl> ls -l tmp total 0 oracle:~/adl> On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 12:44 PM, Jared Still <jkstill@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 10:16 AM, Fmhabash <fmhabash@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> If I may add ... >> - I altered behavior of 'rm' cmd forcing it to be interactive needing >> user confirmation. Scripts coded to use non-interactive version. >> > > A trick to avoid accidentally deleting files you would rather keep. > > Create a file called '-i' in key directories. This will force rm -f to go > into interactive > mode, as the '-i' filename is interpreted as an argument. > > Create '-i' file: touch -- -i > > The double dash is used to tell rm (or any other *nix command) that the > following stuff on the command line is not a command line option. > > Remove the file: rm -- -i > > Create a tmp directory, copy a few files into it, and try it. > > It has saved me at least once. > > > Jared Still > Certifiable Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist > Oracle Blog: http://jkstill.blogspot.com > Home Page: http://jaredstill.com > >