unix sucks

http://m.simson.net/ugh.pdf

We mentioned that the shell performs wildcard expansion
 that is
 it replaces the star (*) with a listing of all the files in a directory. This is flaw #1; the program should be calling a library to perform wildcard expansion. By convention
 programs accept their options as their first argument
 usually preceded by a dash (–). This is flaw #2. Options (switches) and other arguments should be separate entities
 as they are on VMS
 DOS
 Genera
 and many other operationg systems. Finally
 Unix filenames can contain most characters
 including nonprinting ones. This is flaw #3. These architectural choices interact badly. The shell lists files alphabetically when expanding “*”
 and the dash (-) comes first in the lexicographic caste system. Therefore
 filenames that begin with a dash (-) appear first when “*” is used. These filenames become options to the invoked program
 yielding unpredictable
 surprising
 and dangerous behavior.

Date: Wed
 10 Jan 90 10:40 CST
From: kgg@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Kees Goossens)
Subject: Re: rm *
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers

Then there’s the story of the poor student who happened to have a
file called “-r” in his home directory. As he wanted to remove all his
non directory files (I presume) he typed:

% rm *

...And yes
 it does remove everything except the beloved “-r” file... Luckily our backup system was fairly good.


Some Unix victims turn this filename-as-switch bug into a “feature” by keeping a file named “-i” in their directories. Type “rm *” and the shell will expand this to “rm -i filenamelist” which will
 presumably
 ask for confirmation before deleting each file. Not a bad solution
 that
 as long as you don’t mind putting a file named “-i” in every directory. Perhaps we should modify the mkdir command so that the “-i” file gets created automatically. Then we could modify the ls command not to show it.