Scenario:  Sitting in a window on a standalone workstation as root.

           Enter "rm *" assuming that I am in /foobar/blech/bin.

           Notice that I must have been in /bin because "ls" no longer
           exists.  Panic begins to set in.

           Confirm that I was really in /bin.  Panic mounts.

           Use ftp (from /usr/bin) to suck over some executables from
           a similar workstation.  Hmmm.... Ftp doesn't preserve modes.
           Panic level increasing.

           Perl!!  Perl has a built in chmod!

           Use echo to construct a script that will set execute bits on
           sh, tar, cat, ls.

           Tar up /bin on remote workstations and extract to fully
           restore /bin.

           Peace and tranquility have been restored along with /bin.
           {*filter*} pressure returns to normal.  Life goes on.

Buy the book.  Read the book.  Learn Perl.

Note that this would not work on a Sun as /bin is a link to /usr/bin and
ftp would have vanished along with everything else.  

--
Dan Ehrlich - Sr. Systems Programmer - Penn State Computer Science
"Universities should be safe havens where ruthless examination of
 realities will not be distorted by the aim to please or inhibited
 by the risk of displeasure." - Kingman Brewster

|> Note that this would not work on a Sun as /bin is a link to /usr/bin and
|> ftp would have vanished along with everything else.  

But in that case, you'd just use echo to construct a perl script that
mimics ftp (-:

 Dan> Here is just one reason why every system administrator should know perl.
[scenario deleted]
 Dan> Buy the book.  Read the book.  Learn Perl.

Compile a copy statically linked.  Put it in /sbin.  If /sbin is your life
raft, Perl is your Swiss Army Chainsaw.  Nobody should be stuck on a
single-user island without a Swiss Army Chainsaw in their life raft.
--
Christopher K. Davis      |       NET.INSIGHTS INTO ARTISTIC CRITICISM:

System Administrator, EFF | in one museum, you cure it by throwing tomatoes

        -Kartik

Anachronistically still using awk, sed, and the rest,
---Rsk

And, of course, extraordinary care is no substitute for a good set of
backup tapes.  :-)

I almost never get caught by using rm in the wrong directory.  I always
read my newfs three times before typing return.  I'll often cd to the
parent directory and do an rm -rf and then a mkdir just to avoid doing
an "rm *".  What usually gets me is something like, say, starting to
type "rm *.old", thinking better of it after typing the *, reaching for
the backspace key and hitting return instead.

It only helps a little to be the fastest ^C in the West.

: Anachronistically still using awk, sed, and the rest,

I still use awk and sed all day long too, but I call them Perl.  :-)

Larry

One of the nice features about tcsh as an interactive shell
(not a programming language, of course) is that if $rmstar
is set, it find's mistakes like

    rm * .o

mistakes.

:It only helps a little to be the fastest ^C in the West.

I know.  Rm is too small a program.   Maybe we should use the
GNU version? :-)

:: Anachronistically still using awk, sed, and the rest,
:
:I still use awk and sed all day long too, but I call them Perl.  :-)

I still use Latin frequently, and call it Spanish, French, or whatever. :-)

[Followups to appropriate groups for wherever this thread goes, please.]

--tom

--

    Just don't compare it with a real language, or you'll be unhappy...  :-)

ehrlich> Scenario:  Sitting in a window on a standalone workstation as root.

ehrlich>            Enter "rm *" [...in /bin...]

ehrlich>            Use ftp (from /usr/bin) [...]

ehrlich> Note that this would not work on a Sun as /bin is a link to
ehrlich> /usr/bin and ftp would have vanished along with everything
ehrlich> else.

But, then, rwho is in /usr/ucb .... (Think about it. See below if you
give up)

I saw this in a list of "the ten grossest UNIX tricks" or something to
that effect.

                        -AJS

perl -pe '$_=reverse $_;' << __EOF__
neht ,)siht rof ydnah s'lrep( atad eht edocneuu ot deen uoY :REWSNA
si dleif tsoh_tu eht( eceip yb eceip pmtu/cte/ otni ti tup      
,atad fo "tekcap" hcae teg ot ohwr esu nehT .)siht rof lufesu
.ti gnidoced retfa ,elif thgir eht otni ti tup dna

)-; ...noitulos lacitcarp a ton s'ti wonk I ,seY :SP

__EOF__
--
--------
Disclaimer: I am solely responsible for the content of this message.
The views expressed here may not be the views of I-Kinetics, Fidelity,
any of the Fidelity-owned corporations or my mother.

i.e.

rm *~<tab>

then think to yourself "Gee, am I SURE I want to remove all those
annoying emacs backup files?  And why was I using emacs in the first
place instead of vi?" and then hit enter.

-----

Weird?  We've experienced *death*!  Now somehow we've brought back our
sins physically, and they're *pissed*.

still trying to learn awk sed and grep and all those animals ...  :-)

francis

--
| B.F. Francis Ouellette  
| manager, yeast chromosome I project
| dept of biology, McGill university, Montreal, Qc, Canada