Ooops.

Post by paufernandez » Thu, Jun 16, 2011, 6:51 PM UTC

samstokes wrote: post #97

jerf wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the years I've been steadily training myself to type "WHERE" earlier in the process, until I have finally settled on the obvious-in-hindsight solution: Always simply start with the WHERE clause. (Of course every effort not to be on the SQL shell of a production server in the first place should be taken, but sometimes you need a sledgehammer and nothing else will work.)

The habit I learned was: before running any DELETE or UPDATE statement, run a SELECT with the same WHERE. (e.g. if I meant to say DELETE FROM puppies WHERE cute = 0, first run SELECT FROM puppies WHERE cute = 0.) I find I remember to do that because of the direct benefit (getting a sneak preview of what I'm going to delete), but it also means I end up thinking twice about the WHERE statement, so I'm much less likely…

Post by adsr » Thu, Jun 16, 2011, 6:58 PM UTC

sambeau wrote: post #140

Unix could really do with a command that you can wrap around this type of call. Either a sanity check on the path part or a safe rm alternative that contains it. I would gladly give up full rm access to know that I can safely (or safer-ly) delete in scripts. It could be something as simple as a file with paths on each line it - match one path or a path with a glob - and the script fails before destroying anything imp…

Post by Splines » Thu, Jun 16, 2011, 7:09 PM UTC

nickolai wrote: post #12

reminds me of http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Bourne-Into-Oblivion.aspx

Post by ignifero » Thu, Jun 16, 2011, 7:15 PM UTC

trafficlight wrote: post #76

srean wrote: post #46

I learned a rather unusual trick to keep myself safe from unintended glob matches. It is not "fool"-proof, but it will probably dilute an unmitigated disaster into an incomplete disaster: Keep a file named -i in the sensitive directories. When glob picks it up, which should be fairly early, it will be treated like a command line argument. Has saved me on occasions. I also had a friend in school who used to, for whate…

I hate that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach after you realize what's happening. Same thing when you forget the WHERE on a DELETE FROM.

Post by cpeterso » Thu, Jun 16, 2011, 7:19 PM UTC

cool-RR wrote: post #90

meastham wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all of the desktop environments commonly used with Linux do have a trash bin.

If it wasn't obvious, "Why is `rm -rf` not connected to the recycle bin?" is implicit in my original question.

  alias rmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm='rm -i'
  rm() { D="~/.Trash/`date +%s.%N`"; mkdir -p $D; mv "$@" $D; }