Re: Thought I'd throw this in ;-) for the sake of conversation.

[Benjamin Ketcham <bketcham@drizzle.com>]

Nick Roberts <nick.roberts@acm.org> wrote:
> Bj?rn Persson wrote:
>> 
>>    % ls
>>    foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o
>>    % rm * .o
>>    rm: .o: No such file or directory
>>    % ls
>>    %
> 
> And in fact, a fellow student at my university did precisely this. I had 
> the unfortunate task of telling her that all her coursework for the last 
> two weeks was gone. Luckily she got it back (from systems daily backup), 
> but lost a day's work all the same.

Good thing she didn't lose her work on a Windows machine (a much more
common occurrence, IME), since it's so rare to have a daily backup that
includes the Windows machines.  At least Unix only loses your data
when you specifically tell it to!  I've helped a few people over the
years with lost files on Unix (often times the files were not deleted,
but rather moved or linked in unintended ways), but by far most of the
"lost data" help I've had to give is under Windows; and sadly, there's
often little that can be done.  Web browser or word processor freezes up
after you've typed in several pages of text... it's right there on the
screen but you just can't have it... sorry pal, you know the drill: reboot.

> And people still ask me, in querulous tones, why I hate Unix so much.

There are plenty of things to hate about Unix.  OTOH, like democracy,
many people seem to find that Unix is "the worst OS out there, except
for all the others".  And in any case, you haven't brought up any of
the *valid* criticisms of Unix, IMO.  The problem you have encountered
is a symptom of a larger issue: there's no standard, sane environment
for beginners in Unix.  You can alias "rm" to "rm -i" (also remembering
to do "mv -i", "ln -i", etc.; and there's generally a way to make
shells not "clobber" existing files with ">", if you like that sort of thing).
The problem is, that's not the default!  It's up to individual sysadmins
to recognize the issue and implement their own piecemeal solutions -- or
not.  Same goes for "help".  There should never be a desktop OS where typing
"help" doesn't bring up a (standard) help environment of some sort.

Unix is a good OS *technology*, which nobody has quite managed to knit
together into a cohesive package suitable for beginners, yet.  Criticize
it for its flaws, not for your flaws in understanding or effectively
using it.

--Benjamin