Prompted by https://secalert.net/interview-with-rmrf-engineer.html 🌐
Should even something like rm -rf * be expressible in the first place?
How frequently does a legitimate use-case for rm -rf * pop-up?
Wouldn’t that case be better served by something like rm -rf CONST_ALL_FILES?
(Would break continuity with existing shell syntax, for sure, but an analogous question applies there - how frequent is dosomething *? grep, for instance has a -R switch which essentially renders specifying * redundant.)
The end effect is as if in some language, an obscenity was a single wrong syllable (even shorter/simpler than “fuck”) - as if you could accidentally tell someone off by pronouncing a vowel incorrectly (~= accidentally deleting everything by inserting a space in the wrong place - rm -rf * .jpg)
Perhaps language power should be restricted - e.g. disallowing SQL DELETE queries without specifying a WHERE?