English Idiom in Unix: Directory Recursively

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 7:38 AM, rantingrick <rantingrick at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes but understanding of this sort is very general ESPECIALLY in the
> case of destroying data!
>
> What are the limits of the recursion? What forces can act on the
> recursion to stop it? If (for example) I know that a "while loop" will
> continue forever until "something" stops it then i really don't know
> enough about while loops to start using them safely do i?

That's true of anything. If I turn on the light switch, I expect there
to be a limit to the amount of light it produces; I don't want a
household fluro to produce the intensity of the worklights in a
theatre. Ought I to get the technical specs and find out exactly how
many lumens will be produced, or can I safely power it on in the
expectation that it will do the obvious thing?

Chris Angelico
PS. Why am I responding to rantingrick? I'm sure I'm going to regret this.