English Idiom in Unix: Directory Recursively

[rantingrick]

On May 29, 4:46 pm, Chris Angelico <ros... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 7:38 AM, rantingrick <rantingr... 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?


That is a very good argument however it does not consider the fact of
"technical users" verses "non-technical users".

Anyone can be expected to understand the consequenses of switching on
a lightbulb (even a child) because the action requires no logical
thinking abilites... simply flip it and forget it.

HOWEVER not everyone understands the consequeses of recursively
deleting a directory... or whatever that means in the current context.