> -----Original Message-----
> From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
> Behalf Of [log in to unmask]

[other dialogue deleted...]

> To which Scott replies:
>
> >My point was/is, that I believe (as opposed to "I assure you") that
> >usage of the shell "rm -R" command is "relatively" rare. It is
> >certainly not unheard of, so if you did not take any other action to
> >reduce risk, you would still have 'some risk'.
>
> Time for my 2 shekels worth:
> For sake of argument, I did:
>
[grep commands deleted...found lots of occurances os rm -R in MAKEFILE
and configure...]

> That was a simple pattern match for that literal string. I could've
> probably used a regular expression and gotten more matches for those cases
> where there may be two spaces between the "rm" and the "-r" or the pattern
> is something like "rm -fr". Anyway, this is not a "relatively" rare usage
> in POSIX land, especially for anything using autoconf (GNU configure).

OK, I will concede that usage of rm -R is not rare in "POSIX land". Also
use of "POSIX" is increasing across our customer base. I think Mark and
Mark live much deeper in the POSIX world than the vast majority of
our customers. This could be more of a problem than I realize if lots
of Third Party software packages (for example) are using the shell (and
rm -R)
in their installation scripts.

NOTE: I am not saying the problem is not real, or that it is not real
annoying
to our Posix developers, or that we shouldn't fix it. I am just saying that
it does not strike me as a great reason for most traditional HP3000
customers
(running Cobol and Image applications etc) to hold up on installing PP5.