[10527] in Athena Bugs
Re: Xmh delete folder
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Calvin Clark)
Wed Jun 2 12:36:34 1993
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 93 12:36:28 -0400
From: Calvin Clark <ckclark@MIT.EDU>
To: wchuang@Athena.MIT.EDU
Cc: bugs@Athena.MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: "[10524] in Athena Bugs"
You'll find that the tty MH program rmf does the same thing; it will
happily blow away a non-empty folder without warning or query.
> It does not use "delete". This is probably a design flaw...
MH is a design flaw. (Actually, it once had a very good design, but
that was before they wrote any code.) But in all fairness, rmmproc
support for folder operations is something that is understandably left
out; the delete package didn't exist when MH was developed. It's up to
people who use delete a lot---namely Athena sites---to add support for
using delete with folder removals. No one else is going to do it.
However, delete or no delete, there's no question that blowing away an
entire MH folder with a single typo from the shell or slip of the mouse
button is bad. Crossing-the-streams bad.
-Calvin
