[X-Unix] Files Whose Names Begin With "."

[Brian Medley]

On Wed, Nov 24, 2004 at 05:02:00PM -0600, Rod Buchanan wrote:

> On 11/24/04 9:23 AM, "Craig A. Finseth" <fin at finseth.com> wrote:
> 
> > Be carefult though: since it doesn't care, you can get into a lot of
> > trouble.  For example, NEVER DO:
> > 
> > rm -R .*
> > 
> > Unless you want everything in your current directory deleted (:-).
> 
> AND the parent directory!  If you want a test run
> 
>     ls -l .*
> 
> and note what it displays.

In general, I believe that's a good practice.  However, on my box in 10.3.6:

$ ls -lFa
total 0
drwxr-xr-x   4 dufus  dufus  136 24 Nov 17:44 ./
drwxr-xr-x  12 dufus  dufus  408 24 Nov 17:44 ../
-rw-r--r--   1 dufus  dufus    0 24 Nov 17:44 .b
-rw-r--r--   1 dufus  dufus    0 24 Nov 17:44 a
$ rm -R .*
rm: "." and ".." may not be removed
$

-- 
~`^`'~=-._.-=~'`^`'~=-._.-=~'^'~=-., \|/  (___)  \|/ _,.-=~'`^`
                                      @~./'O o`\.~@
      "Knowledge is Power"           /__( \___/ )__\  *PPPFFBT!*
         -- Francis Bacon               `\__`U_/'
 _.-=~'``'~=-._.-=~'``'~=-._.-=~'`^`'~= <____|'  ^^`'~=-.,__,.-=
~'^`'~=-._.-=~'`^`'~=-._.-=~'^'~=-.,__,.-==--^'~=-.,__,.-=~'`^`