[GTALUG] Man deletes his entire company

[Paul King]

Maybe he was using Windows PowerShell, which has adopted a lot of UNIX-isms 
including  "rm" with recursive and force options. If it behaves anything like 
DEL with recursive and force options, it will traverse UPWARDS as well as 
DOWNWARDS in a directory tree (having been burned by that behaviour first-hand 
a few years ago).

On 15 Apr 2016 at 12:47, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:

> | From: Stephen <stephen-d at rogers.com>
> 
> | http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/man-deletes-entire-company-running-bad-line-code-article-1.2601239?cid=msn
> 
> About "rm -rf", the article says:
> 
> 	The code usually deleted specific parts of a server or
> 	computer, but because this code didn't have a specified
> 	target, it deleted everything.
> 
> This isn't true of the rm(1) command.  No operand means delete nothing.
> 
> The story does not ring true for other reasons.  But it could be.
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