11 Feb
2020
11 Feb
'20
3:53 a.m.
On Mon, Feb 10, 2020 at 10:32:58PM -0500, Doug McIlroy wrote:
I had the same thought,
cd /some/place/I/want/to/remove
$PWD is /some/place/I/want/dont/remove
rm -rf ./*
oops.
What i like is
the autocorrect feature in v8:
$ cd /usr/blot
/usr/blit
$ pwd
/usr/blit
Here I am, editor of the v8 manual and unaware of the feature.
We now know that silent correction is a terrible idea. Postel's principle: "be conservative in what
you do, be liberal
in what you accept from others" was doctrine in early HTML
specs, and led to disastrous disagreement among browsers'
interpretation of web pages. Sadly, the "principle" lives on
despite its having been expunged from the HTML spec.
I think Jon had the right intentions. HTML is different than
a command prompt.
I didn't like some Lisp systems' DWIM (do
what I mean) when I
first heard about the feature, and I like it even less 40-some
years on. I would probably have remonstrated with Rob had I
realized the shell was doing it.
Yep, agreed. There are places where that works and there are most
definitely places where they do not. The shell should not guess.