We all know about using ls before a wildcarded rm to make sure
that we're only deleting what we want. But that doesn't really solve
the problem:
you can type ls a*
and then mistakenly type rm s*
with bad consequences - it's just a minor slip of your finger. But
what will always work, if you're a csh or bash user, is:
%ls a*
a1 a2 a3 %rm !$
(ls -d a*
(16.8)
will make less output if any
subdirectory names match the wildcard.)
Using the history mechanism to grab the previous command's arguments is a good way to prevent mistakes.
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