[lug] Filename star

[socket at peakpeak.com]

Subba Rao <subb3 at attglobal.net> writes:
> I guess it is time to implement the 'wastebasket' idea on linux users $HOME.

I'm pretty sure that O'Reilly's "Unix Power Tools" book either has an
example shell script or a pointer to a replacement 'rm' that will
safely put everything away in a temporary directory instead of
removing it, that might as well be called 'wastebasket' if that's what
you like.

I'm back home in Grand Junction for a while, and am not completely
positive that such a tool is actually there, as I didn't bring my
entire book collection along.  If it's not, I'm pretty sure someone
could whip up a script for you.  If you want to try it yourself, be
real careful of race conditions-- how to handle deleting files of the
same name, multiple directories, things like that.  I once posted an
overly trivial perl script here that would dangerously rename a
directory of files according to a regex.  Point is, it can be done
correctly if you put a little thought to it, and it's probably worth
your while if you haven't been bitten by commands like 'rm -rf /etc'
before.

Have fun!

--
Chris Riddoch                  socket at peakpeak.com
Will provide pseudo-insightful commentary for food
                   http://www.peakpeak.com/~socket

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