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Who hasn't typed a risky command? Throw the first stone! (programming.dev)
submitted 4 days ago by calango@programming.dev to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
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Sudo rm -rf .

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[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 61 points 4 days ago

DOS user detected! In linux you don't need *.*, you can just use *

[-] lena@gregtech.eu 39 points 4 days ago

Maybe he wanted to remove only files with a dot in the name

[-] jaybone@lemmy.zip 9 points 4 days ago

And if he’s on / (root) on most common distros, there won’t be any dirs with . (dot) in their name. Unless this matches the dot from the cwd, in which case this is the same as “rm -rf /“? Now I’m curious, I don’t often perform operations on the cwd using dot.

[-] lena@gregtech.eu 6 points 4 days ago

At least bash doesn't seem to match it...

gregor@raspberrypi:~ $ ls
bridge  navidrome  seed  traefik
gregor@raspberrypi:~ $ ls *.*
ls: cannot access '*.*': No such file or directory
gregor@raspberrypi:~ $ cat *.*
cat: '*.*': No such file or directory
[-] jaybone@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Right, so then if asterisk wildcards don’t match on . and .. then, in most common distros where there is no dot in any of the top level dirs in /, “rm -rf *.*” in the top level / dir is basically harmless and likely a noop.

So OP is wrong.

[-] lena@gregtech.eu 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Technically, it says he's in the ~ directory, which would usually be /home/god, but even in there there aren't usually any directories/files with a dot.

[-] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 9 hours ago

~ has many dot directories and files

[-] calango@programming.dev 12 points 4 days ago

God programmed the universe into DOS

[-] jaybone@lemmy.zip 6 points 4 days ago

This explains a lot.

[-] Stupidmanager@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Going to point out that not only is *.* unnecessary, but he’s in ~ (home) so assuming it even worked he just deleted his home.

[-] into_highest_invite@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 4 days ago

maybe his $PS1 just happens to have a tilde in it

[-] Scrath@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 days ago

Well, guess that's it for heaven

[-] prettybunnys@piefed.social 4 points 4 days ago

well, depending on your shell

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 4 days ago

Which shell interprets * as everything before extension?

[-] prettybunnys@piefed.social 7 points 4 days ago

Well I’m not necessarily commenting on the *.* but * will skip .files in bash.

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 days ago

I think *. * also skips them

[-] prettybunnys@piefed.social 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

*.* will likely expect a file named *. and then delete any file globbed, but still leave dotfiles. At least in bash.

In my shell it would just error at me and then I’d be mad fish doesn’t work like bash in this specific case

this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
514 points (97.6% liked)

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