"Perry E. Metzger" <perry@imsi.com> wrote:
> Martin Husemann says:
> > > Found an interesting, er..., problem (?) with rm the other day. Doing
> > > an 'rm -rf' on some directory, say '/tmp/fred', by typing 'rm -rf
> > > /tmp/fred', works fine, but typing 'rm -rf /tmp/fred/' complains that
> > > /tmp/fred/ is a directory.
> > 
> > This is an old BSD vs. SysV difference. I never understood why that
> > would be useful, but it's in all BSD's I've worked with.
> 
> Having become used to the SunOS behavior, I'd argue that cutting the
> user more slack and taking the trailing / is "the right thing".

I agree. It is on the same principle as a//b being equivalent to a/b.

For completeness, I would even argue for dir/file/.. being equivalent
to just dir, which is (in unix notation) what AmigaDOS does. Except that
under Unix a file has no ".." entry but under AmigaDOS the ParentDir()
of a file is defined and useful.

-Olaf.
--
___ Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert    rhialto@mbfys.kun.nl     Ooey-Gooey-Fluffy-Barfie
\X/ I'm not weird, I'm differently percepted. D787B44DFC896063 4CBB95A5BD1DAA96