3 ms·

I have no idea if this is possible: mv ~/* /dev/null

• blitz_skull 11mo ago
  Hmm... Let me go run it real quick without checking what it does. EDIT: OH MY GOD
  • irishcoffee 11mo ago
    Har har, I meant within the permission framework of the bots people unleash on their personal computers. I assume yes.
• realo 11mo ago
  Try that one instead: mv ~/. /dev/null Better. Extra points if you achieve that one also: mv /. /dev/null Slashdot aficionados might object to that last one, though.
  • klempner 11mo ago
    Speaking of Slashdot, some fairly frequent poster had a signature back around 2001/2002 had a signature that was something like mv /bin/laden /dev/null and then someone explained how that was broken: even if that succeeds, what you've done is to replace the device file /dev/null with the regular file that was previously at /bin/laden, and then whenever other things redirect their output to /dev/null they'll be overwriting this random file than having output be discarded immediately, which is moderately bad. Your version will just fail (even assuming root) because mv won't let you replace a file with a directory.