Also, you'd want to put in a double dash to signify the end of arguments as otherwise someone could set VAR="--no-preserve-root " and truly trash the system. Al

Also, you'd want to put in a double dash to signify the end of arguments as otherwise someone could set VAR="--no-preserve-root " and truly trash the system. Also, ${VAR} needs to be in double quotes for something as dangerous as a "rm" command: rm -rf -- "${VAR}"/*