Re: OT: data destruction classics (was: Re: Error converting from 1.4.4.1 to 1.5.0?)

Andy Parkins <andyparkins@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm nowhere near that impressive, unfortunately.

Once upon a time, I was trying to build some package (I forget which) from its source distribution. It was an GNU-y Autoconf kind of thing. I didn't want to install it globally at that point, just in my home directory. So I said

  $ ./configure --prefix=~
  $ make
  $ make install

So far, so good.  Now try to run the thing.

  $ foo
  bash: foo: command not found

Oh.  Where's it gone?

  $ ls

That's annoying. Bad shell. It's failed to expand `~', and just put everything in a directory called `~' in my build tree. Bugger. I don't want it there.

  $ rm -rf ~

I wonder why it's taking so lo... ^C^C^C^C

-- [mdw]