undo rm -rf *

[Celik]

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 4:38 AM, Bill Oliver <vendor at billoblog.com> wrote:

>
> I'm not a fan of trash directories.  They give you a second chance, but
> you may end up not really deleting things you wanted to delete.  What
> about a simple script something like this?  This is off the top of my
> head and not tested (so certainly has a bug or two), but it seems that
> you could check with something like this:
>
> #!/bin/sh
>
> echo "check?"
>
> read ANS
>
> if [ $ANS = "y" ]
>
> then
>
>         ls -laR $1 | more
>
>         echo "continue?"
>
>         read ANS2
>
>         if [ $ANS2 = "y" ]
>
>         then
>
>                 rm -fr $1
>
>         fi
> else
>
>         rm -fr $1
>
> fi
>
>
Yes that script will do to prevent accidental deletions in the future.
Modified it slightly and posting it just in case needed by someone else.
Thank you :)

#!/bin/bash

echo -e "prompt-bf-deletion.sh...\n"

rm_target=$1

echo "+++Content(s) to be deleted:"
ls -laR $rm_target | more


echo -e "\n+++Continue with deletion (y/n)?"

read ANS

if [ $ANS = "y" ]; then
    rm -fr $rm_target
    echo -e "Contents deleted...\n"
else
    echo -e "Exiting without deletion...\n"

fi

exit






> Of course there are two problems with big deletions.  If you use more, it
> would get boring hitting the space bar a zillion times, and if you don't,
> then you won't see the files...
>
>
> billo
>
>
> On Wed, 27 Mar 2013, Celik wrote:
>
>
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 1:14 AM, Bruno Wolff III <bruno at wolff.to> wrote:
>>       On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 22:23:29 +1100,
>>         Celik <celik.n.00 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>             Hi,
>>
>>             Had a logic error in my bash script and did "rm -rf *" on my
>> current
>>             working directory. Any tips for undoing such an error?
>>
>>
>> I've done worse. I once did rm -rf .* to try to remove some config files
>> in a home directory. I forgot that .*
>> matched .. and deleted a lot of stuff I didn't want to.
>>
>>
>> Bruno, after such an experience, did you come up with an alternative
>> solution to using "rm -rf"?
>> "rm -i" is good as it prompts before deletion however it becomes tedious
>> if there are a lot of files to be deleted,
>> hence "rm -rf" seems ideal but dangerous if not cautious :(
>> Had a look on google, there was one particular recommendation that caught
>> me attention (sorry I don't have the link). It
>> was recommended to mv the files (and/or folders) to be deleted into a tmp
>> directory. I'm planning to try that in my
>> future code, we'll see how things go.
>>
>> Regards,
>> C
>>
>>
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