Let me give you and example of the difference between

Linux open source world brain damaged thinking and

what it's like out here in the real world.
Go to a directory with 10k files and type:
rm *
What do you get?
/bin/rm: Argument list too long
If you map a network drive in DOS and type:
del *
It works.
That's the problem with the type of thinking in the

open source world. Why can DOS delete an infinite

number of files and rm can't? Because rm was written

using the "vi" editor and it causes brain damage and

that's why after 20 years rm hasn't caught up with

del.
Before everyone gets pissed off and freaks out why

don't you ponder the question why rm won't delete all

the files in the directory. If you can't grasp that

then you're brain damaged.
Think big people. Say NO to vi!
Marc Perkel

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Given that you don't even understand that this message is issued by the

*shell* and not /bin/rm, and *why* it issues that sort of error message

when an argument string expands to be bigger than MAX_ARGV, and the fact

that there are extant patches to increase that to essentially any reasonable

size, why should we listen to you when you proclaim that you have any sort

of enlightenment about systems design?

What does this have to do with rm command?
--

Jiri Slaby (jirislaby@gmail.com)

Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University

-

See what I mean?
Marc Perkel

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Nothing, and no more with linux development. Marc confuses shell and rm.

Under DOS, when he types "del *", the shell calls the builtin function

"del" and passes it only one argument "*". The del function is then

responsible for iterating through the files using getfirst/getnext.
This is also why mostly only builtin shell commands support "*", while

most external commands do not support it, since they have to re-implement

the same code to iterate through the files (try "debug c*.com", it will

not work).
Under unix, the shell resolves "*" and passes the 10000 file names to

the "rm" command. Now, execve() may fail because 10000 names in arguments

can require too much memory. That's why find and xargs were invented!
The solution is easy : find . -maxdepth 1 | xargs rm
So this has nothing to do with rm, nor with rm being open-source, and

even less with rm being written with vi, and Marc's rant is totally

wrong and off-topic. Maybe he was drunk when posting, or maybe someone

used his keyboard to make him look like a complete fool. Or maybe he

really is.
Willy

(please do not follow up on this OT thread, responses to /dev/null)
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Then do not answer in the first place. Do not answer at all. There's tons of

good literature that explains this. Don't feed the troll.
	Torsten

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The important point that you are missing here is that

the Linux world is willing to live with an rm command

that is broken and the Windows and DOS world isn't.

This isn't about the rm command it's about programming

standards. It's about that the Linux community isn't

committed to getting it right.
Just like my thinking outside the box thread when I

try to say "this is broken" people don't go fix it.

Instead I get an explanation why Linux isn't capable

of having an rm command that will delete an unlimited

number of files.
I bet there are Microsoft people out there laughing at

this.
THINK ABOUT IT PEOPLE !!!
20 years, a million programmers, tens of millions of

users and RM is BROKEN. Am I the only one who has a

problem with this? If so - I'm normal - and Linux is a

cult.
Marc Perkel

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Thanks man, you've made my day. I haven't laughed this hard at a mildly
Calling something that bas been working for decades broken, and offering

a vague idea that is not only riddled with usability issues but also

unimplementable in an even remotely efficient manner, and yet expecting

people to jump into action and write it for you while deprecating an

enormous amount of existing code, is something best described as

surreal. Disregarding peer review and calling it an "attack" is just
All hail Linus the great.
-- m. tharp

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I wonder, do these sorts of people email random celebrities and tell

them they suck? If not, why do they think emailing a developer mailing

list about how much they hate their product, work ethics, and general

way of life is more socially acceptable?

-

no the important point is that you're an absolute horrible troll and are

posting things to the ENTIRELY WRONG MAILING LIST. For some people who

are new that happens sometimes as accident. You know better.
So please take this elsewhere and try to have better judgement in the

future as to what mailinglist you want to send your complaints to.
-

On Sun, 19 Aug 2007 06:22:37 -0700 (PDT)
Fixed in 2.6.23-rc (and not just for "rm"):
commit b6a2fea39318e43fee84fa7b0b90d68bed92d2ba

Author: Ollie Wild <aaw@google.com>

Date:   Thu Jul 19 01:48:16 2007 -0700
    mm: variable length argument support
    Remove the arg+env limit of MAX_ARG_PAGES by copying the strings

    directly from the old mm into the new mm.

[...]
--

	Paolo Ornati

	Linux 2.6.23-rc3-g2a677896-dirty on x86_64

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Good man!
Marc Perkel

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Yuhu! The rm command isn't broken (nothing is broken related to this).

Have you been reading? Can you even (read)?
Fscking troll.
--

Jose Celestino

----------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.msversus.org/     ; http://techp.org/petition/show/1

http://www.vinc17.org/noswpat.en.html

----------------------------------------------------------------

"And on the trillionth day, Man created Gods." -- Thomas D. Pate

-

The important point you are missing is that it is not the rm command

which is broken. Either it's *all* commands or it's *your* way of

thinking how they should work.
I could play your game and say the "type" command is broken under

DOS. Why can't I do "type *" under DOS while I can do "cat *" under

linux ? For the exact same reason : the "*" is not processed at

the same place. Unix initially chose to process it in the caller,

and DOS later chose to process it in the callee. Neither is right,

neither is wrong, those are just two different approaches which may

be justified in their context. Having discovered DOS at 1.25 which

did not even support directories, I certainly can say that missing
It has nothing to do with programming standards, the rm command works

exactly like all others. Touch does the same, mv does the same, etc...
$ rm -rf $DIR will remove an unlimited number of files in this directory.
If you want to make a special case of "rm", then implement the special

case in the command and make it possible to pass it a globbing expression
Oh yes, they are surely laughing at you, but at the same time they may
Yes, I really think you're the only one who has this problem. Don't you

think that among those tens of millions of users, none of them has ever

had to remove a directory full of files in 20 years ? Please stop taking

yourself for the center of the world and buy a "unix for newbies" book

instead of complaining the world is not like you would like it to be.
Willy
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[snip]
Marc, why don't you do the obvious thing and hire Jeff Merkey?

He used to work on netware kernel, you are a netware fanboy...

Hell, he might even share - his peyotl for whatever you are on;

it certainly has... intriguing effects, so who knows - maybe the

mix will give the right kind of out-of-box experience for you ;-)

-

hmmmmm .....
So if you take Peyote then you think of things like

"rm *" should delete all the files in a folder and if

you're not on drugs then del from DOS being better

than rm in Linux is OK.
For what it's worth. I agree it seems to be that way.

I tried Peyote once about 25 years ago and it was

fantastic.
Marc Perkel

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Sounds like it hasn't worn off yet.

-

Afreed.
Marc Perkel

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