this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
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Who hasn't typed a risky command? Throw the first stone! (programming.dev)
submitted 1 week ago by calango@programming.dev to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
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Sudo rm -rf .

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[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 61 points 1 week ago (4 children)

DOS user detected! In linux you don't need *.*, you can just use *

[–] lena@gregtech.eu 39 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Maybe he wanted to remove only files with a dot in the name

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And if he’s on / (root) on most common distros, there won’t be any dirs with . (dot) in their name. Unless this matches the dot from the cwd, in which case this is the same as “rm -rf /“? Now I’m curious, I don’t often perform operations on the cwd using dot.

[–] lena@gregtech.eu 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

At least bash doesn't seem to match it...

gregor@raspberrypi:~ $ ls
bridge  navidrome  seed  traefik
gregor@raspberrypi:~ $ ls *.*
ls: cannot access '*.*': No such file or directory
gregor@raspberrypi:~ $ cat *.*
cat: '*.*': No such file or directory
[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Right, so then if asterisk wildcards don’t match on . and .. then, in most common distros where there is no dot in any of the top level dirs in /, “rm -rf *.*” in the top level / dir is basically harmless and likely a noop.

So OP is wrong.

[–] lena@gregtech.eu 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Technically, it says he's in the ~ directory, which would usually be /home/god, but even in there there aren't usually any directories/files with a dot.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 3 days ago

~ has many dot directories and files

[–] calango@programming.dev 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

God programmed the universe into DOS

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 week ago

This explains a lot.

[–] Stupidmanager@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Going to point out that not only is *.* unnecessary, but he’s in ~ (home) so assuming it even worked he just deleted his home.

[–] into_highest_invite@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 week ago

maybe his $PS1 just happens to have a tilde in it

[–] Scrath@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

Well, guess that's it for heaven

[–] prettybunnys@piefed.social 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

well, depending on your shell

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Which shell interprets * as everything before extension?

[–] prettybunnys@piefed.social 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Well I’m not necessarily commenting on the *.* but * will skip .files in bash.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think *. * also skips them

[–] prettybunnys@piefed.social 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

*.* will likely expect a file named *. and then delete any file globbed, but still leave dotfiles. At least in bash.

In my shell it would just error at me and then I’d be mad fish doesn’t work like bash in this specific case