I don't have an account on StackExchange but the best way to avoid this is to al... | Hacker News

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		dools on Dec 3, 2011 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: How do I prevent accidental rm -rf /? I don't have an account on StackExchange but the best way to avoid this is to always run find and then pipe to rm. find . -name "whatevs*" hit enter, verify you are deleting what you expect then hit the up arrow and type: \| xargs rm -rf

sirn on Dec 3, 2011 [–]

...or just use `-delete`:

   find . -iname "whatever" -delete

Otherwise you're screwed if someone managed to put a file named "/" somewhere in your find directory, which `-delete` has safe-guard for.

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