Unix Programming - Problems in the Design of Unix - File Deletion Is Forever
File Deletion Is Forever
People with VMS experience, or who remember
TOPS-20 often
miss these systems' file-versioning facilities. Opening an existing file
for write or deleting it actually renamed it in a predictable way
including a version number; only an explicit removal operation on a
version file actually erased data.
Unix does without this, at a not inconsiderable cost in user
irritation when the wrong files get deleted through a typo or
unexpected effects of shell wildcarding.
There does not seem to be any foreseeable prospect that this will
change at the operating system level. Unix developers like clear, simple
operations that do what the user tells them to do, even if the user's
instructions could amount to commanding “shoot me in the
foot”. Their instinct is to say that protecting the user
from himself should be done at the GUI or application level, not
in the operating system.
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