The ImageMagick utility mogrify. By default (without specifying extra command-line options) it overwrites the input files. [1] In decades of computer use, tha

The ImageMagick utility mogrify. By default (without specifying extra command-line options) it overwrites the input files. [1] In decades of computer use, that is the only command line tool that tricked me into destroying my data because I didn't realize it works differently from all the other tools I use that don't do that. Usually, a command line utility with less options specified is relatively "safe" and you have to add extra syntax to make it "unsafe". It was definitely a violation of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishmen... EDIT reply to: >The whole reason for mogrify's existence is that it overwrites the original image file. Sure, I understand that but many other destructive tools will have safety UI features such as creating ".bak" backup files. That's what many other command line tools do including image utilities. So something like mogrify could have been designed with hypothetical syntax as "mogrify -nobackups". The principle is to type extra syntax to make it more dangerous while still accomplishing the (observable) goal of changing the original files. [1] https://superuser.com/questions/1575004/imagemagick-how-to-avoid-overwriting-existing-files-with-mogrify https://superuser.com/questions/1575004/imagemagick-how-to-a...