

Gruber: Today's command line isn't dangerous, just convenient - ams1
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/05/12/atwood-location-field

======
mustpax
Don't wanna get all Unix-macho here, but the regular command line is also
pretty safe when you're just launching applications and doing things
equivalent to the location bar. It gets dangerous for only a specific subset
of administrative commands such as rm, mv, apt- which provide different
functionality anyway.

That said. you can get burnt clobbering important files with output
redirection. It's a good idea to enable the "noclobbler" setting in Bash like
so:

    
    
      set -o noclobber
    

It's saved me plenty of times from deleting important partially process data.

------
ericwaller
The new ones aren't dangerous because you can't actually _do_ anything with
them. As soon as I can send an email (or affect the outside world in any way)
from the location bar, it becomes just as dangerous as the unix command line.

~~~
bazbarfoo

      cd /
      rm *
    

essentially renders your machine useless. Surely it would be easy to make it
less dangerous than this.

~~~
ericwaller
Of course it would be, my point is that less dangerous necessarily means less
powerful. Though I'd agree that there are cases where the trade off is
desirable, like `rm -rf /`.

------
benreesman
you can pry bash from my cold, dead hands.

~~~
pookleblinky
Try taking zsh away from me and my cold, dead jaw will reanimate and seek your
throat.

