English Idiom in Unix: Directory Recursively

[Xah Lee]

On May 22, 3:46 pm, Chris Angelico <ros... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 6:22 AM, Xah Lee <xah... at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Xah wrote:
> > «In the emacs case: “Recursive delete of xx? (y or n) ”, what could it
> > possibly mean by the word “recursive” there? Like, it might delete the
> > directory but not delete all files in it?
> > »
>
> > Jonathan de Boyne Pollard wrote:
> >> It might *try* to delete the directory but not any of its contents,
> >> yes.
>
> > you mean theoretically you see a possibility if the dir is implement
> > as stilted as unix, but never in your life you find yourself might
> > want to do it?
>
> There's a difference between working with a directory itself and
> working with files inside it. Generally, if you copy or delete a
> directory, you will want to recurse. But if you want to, for instance,
> wipe out all files whose names end with a tilde, then you might want
> to recurse and you might not. So it makes sense to offer the user a
> choice, and if recursive action is the only one that makes sense, at
> least acknowledge that the operation might take an arbitrarily long
> time. (Ever done a recursive operation on / on a large file system?
> Takes just a little bit longer than a non-recursive one under the same
> circumstances...)

the context is this: In emacs directory manager (aka dired), when you
call dired-do-delete on a directory, emacs prompts, this way:
“Recursive delete of xx? (y or n)”

 Xah