why not root?

John Chambers,,,781-647-1813 jc at trillian.mit.edu
Wed Dec 8 16:56:15 EST 1999



	The first (and usually last) time that you accidentally run
	"rm -rf *" in the wrong directory (usually / ) will make it
	obvious why you don't want to be root all the time.  

Actually, a much better example is something like:
   rm -rf  * .o

The reason is that most people will react to "rm  -rf  *"  by  saying
"Well,  I've never typed such a thing in any directory, so what's the
big deal?" But they probably have typed something like
   rm -rf  *.o

A lot of users will have  trouble  spotting  the  difference  between
these,  but of course the first is likely to be a disaster, while the
second is a fairly routine command for a C programmer.

The keyboard that I'm using to type this is one that seems to like to
insert  spaces at unusual places, presumably because the space bar is
much more sensitive than other keys.  OTOH, the 'a'  and  quote  keys
often don't work.  Lots of people can relate to flakey keyboards.

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