3mo ago

Tried to rm -r my .cache but accidentally did .config instead...

I'm a complete moron, I should've had that backed up and used trash...
I had to learn the hard way lol

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Here's a rule I learned the hard way a few decades ago:
If you type "rm", take you hands off the keyboard and take one deliberate breath before continuing your command.
If you then type "-r", do it again.
If you then type "-f" do it again.
In all cases, re-read what you wrote before hitting ENTER.
- I'm a big fan of starting the command with a #, then removing it once I'm happy with the command to defend against accidentally hitting enter
  Putting ~ next to the enter key on keyboards (at least UK ones) was an evil villain level decision
  
  When I'm unsure, I ls <the-glob>, chek, then replace ls with rm.
  
  This. When the ls command works, hit ctrl-a, meta-d, type rm, enter.
  
  Oh, didn't knew about Alt d. Thx
  
  I really like this # idea. I've also taken to holding off on adding sudo when deleting privileged files
  
  I never thought of doing that in 40 years. It's a great idea actually. Thanks!
- Or have backups (lol)
  
  AND have backups.
  
  In the few years of me exclusively using the command line to manage files, even having rm aliased to rm -rf, and at some point to sudo rm -rf, out of convenience, I think it has happened thrice that I deleted the wrong file, and twice I was able to restore it with (hourly) backups. The third time, it was a minecraft world which I had created to test some mods and the server start script, and I had excluded it from backups because my ~/games dir is usually only used by steam.
- -i doesn't exist?
- Also, triple-check which machine you're actually logged into.

60 comments