Re: Warning! dired may be following symlinks during recursive rm !

karlheg> I had a "test-config" directory where I ran configure, and a build karlheg> failed... then I used `dired' to rm it, said yes to the "recurse" karlheg> question. karlheg> Now the contents of <xemacs checkout>/etc/* are gone. This has karlheg> happened before and I think it's dired doing it. Judging by the code, you are correct: (defun dired-recursive-delete-directory (fn) ;; Recursively deletes directory FN, and all of its contents. (let* ((fn (expand-file-name fn)) ... (let ((files (directory-files fn t))) (while files (let ((file (car files))) (if (not (member (file-name-nondirectory file) '("." ".."))) (if (file-directory-p file) (dired-recursive-delete-directory file) (delete-file file))) (setq files (cdr files)))) (delete-directory fn)))))) The test: (if (file-directory-p file) Is broken: -rw-r--r-- 1 gshapiro gshapiro 599 Jan 17 1999 .tcshrc drwx------ 4 gshapiro gshapiro 512 May 29 17:18 Work lrwxr-xr-x 1 gshapiro gshapiro 4 May 29 23:02 x -> Work ELISP> (file-directory-p (expand-file-name "~/Work")) t ELISP> (file-directory-p (expand-file-name "~/.tcshrc")) nil ELISP> (file-directory-p (expand-file-name "~/x")) t So when it recurses, the: (let ((files (directory-files fn t))) catches the files in the symlinked directory. This should be enough to fix it: --- dired.el~ Thu Apr 5 04:53:37 2001 +++ dired.el Tue May 29 23:06:42 2001 ＠＠ -3608,7 +3608,8 ＠＠ (let ((file (car files))) (if (not (member (file-name-nondirectory file) '("." ".."))) - (if (file-directory-p file) + (if (and (file-directory-p file) + (not (file-symlink-p file))) (dired-recursive-delete-directory file) (delete-file file))) (setq files (cdr files))))