In the few years of me exclusively using the command line to manage files, even having rm aliased to rm -rf, and at some point to sudo rm -rf, out of convenience, I think it has happened thrice that I deleted the wrong file, and twice I was able to restore it with (hourly) backups. The third time, it was a minecraft world which I had created to test some mods and the server start script, and I had excluded it from backups because my ~/games dir is usually only used by steam.
Here’s a rule I learned the hard way a few decades ago:
I’m a big fan of starting the command with a
#, then removing it once I’m happy with the command to defend against accidentally hitting enterPutting
~next to the enter key on keyboards (at least UK ones) was an evil villain level decisionWhen I’m unsure, I
ls <the-glob>, chek, then replacelswithrm.This. When the ls command works, hit ctrl-a, meta-d, type rm, enter.
Oh, didn’t knew about
Alt d. ThxI really like this # idea. I’ve also taken to holding off on adding sudo when deleting privileged files
I never thought of doing that in 40 years. It’s a great idea actually. Thanks!
-idoesn’t exist?Or have backups (lol)
AND have backups.
In the few years of me exclusively using the command line to manage files, even having rm aliased to rm -rf, and at some point to sudo rm -rf, out of convenience, I think it has happened thrice that I deleted the wrong file, and twice I was able to restore it with (hourly) backups. The third time, it was a minecraft world which I had created to test some mods and the server start script, and I had excluded it from backups because my ~/games dir is usually only used by steam.