Re: [PATCH] clean: confirm before cleaning files and directories

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Apr 26, 2013, 19:06 UTC
Message-ID: <7vmwslw1py.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <7vppxhxltk.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

Show 13 quoted lines

> Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr> writes:
>
>> The nice thing with the confirmation dialog is that it shows the list
>> before asking (and unlike 'rm -i', it asks only once).
>
> I wouldn't object to having "clean -i", which automatically defeats
> the requireforce option.
>
> As to a huge single list you have to approve or reject as a whole, I
> am on the fence.  When running "rm -i", I often wished to see
> something like that, but I am fairly sure that I'll call it unusable
> the first time I see a list with a few items I want to keep while
> removing all others.

Elaborating on this a bit more, hoping it would help people who want to design the "--confirm-before-doing" option...

The primary reason I think the user will find "We are going to remove these. OK?" irritating is that most of the time, there are only a few items that the user would want to keep.

	$ rm --confirm-before-doing -r path
	... list of three dozens of items, among which
        ... there may be two items that should be kept
        Remove all? [Y/n]

After seeing this prompt and saying 'n', the user would _not_ thank the command for reminding about these precious two items, because the only next step available to the user is to remove the remaining 34 items manually.

"Confirm in bulk before doing" feature can become useful if it had a "line item veto" option in the confirmation time. The interaction then could go like this:

	$ rm --confirm-before-doing -r path
	path/foo    path/frotz/nitfol    path/sotto
        path/bar    path/frotz/xyzzy     path/trail
        ...            ...               ...     
        Remove (list items you want to keep)? path/frotz

and the user could instruct it to remove everything other than those inside path/fortz. If the user do not want to remove anything, there is an option to ^C out of the command.