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A warning on a new destructive 'trojan horse'
Authored by: frankc on May 13, '04 08:44:52AM

no, rm -rf ~/* is an exact synonym for rm -rf ~. The shell will interpret the ~/* and expand (glob) it in arguments for each entry in your home directory, so the actual command would be rm -rf ~/Library ~/Projects ....



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A warning on a new destructive 'trojan horse'
Authored by: ReznorB5 on May 14, '04 06:32:11AM

Actually, rm -rf ~ and rm -rf ~/* are different because the former deletes the user directory itself and all subdirectories and files, whereas latter refers to the contents of the user directory, excluding any files that begin with a dot. Also, -R and -r are equivalent flags, and when you use -f, it implies -d automatically, so only -f is needed.

Also, in order so see what files it will get when you specify "~" slightly differently, try these commands and compare. This will list the contents of your user directory:
ls -Ra ~
ls -Ra ~/
ls -Ra ~/*



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