4 ms·

> To help prevent this problem from happening in the first place, many people elect to alias the rm command to a script which will move files to a temporary loc

by cryptoz 16y ago

> To help prevent this problem from happening in the first place, many people elect to alias the rm command to a script which will move files to a temporary location, like a trash bin, instead of actually deleting them. Whatever happened to backups? To help prevent this problem... KEEP A BACKUP.

derefr 16y ago
The kinds of files I most often regret rm-ing are the temporary files I have created myself as a step in a process, then deleted after I had moved onto the next step, not realizing an error had crept into the processor and that I would have to run it again on the source files (which are now, conveniently, gone.) Backups don't solve this problem, because the files themselves are never more than an hour old. A "trash" folder, however, fixes this perfectly: the semantic is that the file no longer has any place it "belongs," and may be purged if you successfully complete the project, but may be needed again if the project must be "rewound" to that step. However, you're right that making rm(1) express move semantics isn't the right solution. Maybe if the filesystem had a "BEGIN TRANSACTION" command that you could ROLLBACK...
- MHordecki 16y ago
  Btrfs to the rescue!
  - sid0 16y ago
    TxNTFS!
- BrandonM 16y ago
  Storage is cheap.... Why remove intermediate files at all? If you don't want to permanently remove files, then why use rm? Just create a "del" command that moves deleted files to a trash folder. You can then make part of your backup routine be to empty the trash after performing the backup (since that file would now be available in the backups).
  - derefr 16y ago
    You're right—it's more of a "these files are in the way, and I'm sure I'm done with them... so it shouldn't hurt to just type those two little letters and reclaim the storage..." Actually, that sounds like exactly the cognitive dissonance people had when they first started using Gmail. Perhaps filesystems need an "Archive" folder as well? Not even a Trash folder—because people want to empty a Trash folder—but rather just an enforced (and shell-supported) directory where things go when you don't have any reason to keep them, and therefore have no place to put them?
thaumaturgy 16y ago
My backups don't run on a minute-to-minute basis (dunno about yours), so it's totally plausible that I can spend all day working on a particular file and then mistakenly nuke it somehow, and it won't be retrievable by the most backup standards.
- mike-cardwell 16y ago
  I bought a TimeCapsule and pointed TimeMachine at it on my Mac, so I have hourly backups. Losing an hours worth of work is annoying, but considerably less annoying than losing a days worth of work.

by cryptoz 16y ago

derefr 16y ago

The kinds of files I most often regret rm-ing are the temporary files I have created myself as a step in a process, then deleted after I had moved onto the next step, not realizing an error had crept into the processor and that I would have to run it again on the source files (which are now, conveniently, gone.) Backups don't solve this problem, because the files themselves are never more than an hour old. A "trash" folder, however, fixes this perfectly: the semantic is that the file no longer has any place it "belongs," and may be purged if you successfully complete the project, but may be needed again if the project must be "rewound" to that step. However, you're right that making rm(1) express move semantics isn't the right solution. Maybe if the filesystem had a "BEGIN TRANSACTION" command that you could ROLLBACK...

MHordecki 16y ago
Btrfs to the rescue!
- sid0 16y ago
  TxNTFS!
BrandonM 16y ago
Storage is cheap.... Why remove intermediate files at all? If you don't want to permanently remove files, then why use rm? Just create a "del" command that moves deleted files to a trash folder. You can then make part of your backup routine be to empty the trash after performing the backup (since that file would now be available in the backups).
- derefr 16y ago
  You're right—it's more of a "these files are in the way, and I'm sure I'm done with them... so it shouldn't hurt to just type those two little letters and reclaim the storage..." Actually, that sounds like exactly the cognitive dissonance people had when they first started using Gmail. Perhaps filesystems need an "Archive" folder as well? Not even a Trash folder—because people want to empty a Trash folder—but rather just an enforced (and shell-supported) directory where things go when you don't have any reason to keep them, and therefore have no place to put them?

thaumaturgy 16y ago

My backups don't run on a minute-to-minute basis (dunno about yours), so it's totally plausible that I can spend all day working on a particular file and then mistakenly nuke it somehow, and it won't be retrievable by the most backup standards.

mike-cardwell 16y ago
I bought a TimeCapsule and pointed TimeMachine at it on my Mac, so I have hourly backups. Losing an hours worth of work is annoying, but considerably less annoying than losing a days worth of work.