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Comment by llimllib | Hacker News Reader

I've written a couple tools that default to dry run and require `--yes-actually-delete` and similar, but I can't think of any publicly available tools that follow this pattern - anybody have suggestions?

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`hdparm --yes-i-know-what-i-am-doing --please-destroy-my-drive --fwdownload`

https://github.com/Distrotech/hdparm/blob/4517550db29a91420f...

Not quite the same, but apt commands like apt-get require user interaction to confirm what you are about to do, unless you explicitly add a "-y" / "--yes" to the command.

apt will sometimes prompt you to confirm really dangerous options too:

       sudo apt-get purge login
       ..
       WARNING: The following essential packages will be removed.
       This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you are doing!
         login
       0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 303 not upgraded.
       After this operation, 1,212 kB disk space will be freed.
       You are about to do something potentially harmful.
       To continue type in the phrase 'Yes, do as I say!'
        ?]

Not exactly the same, but along the same lines: mysql has an --i-am-a-dummy flag so that DELETE queries won't run without a WHERE.

”git clean” sort-of works like this. It errors out unless you explicitly specify if it’s a real run or dry run.

`git push` in cases of conflict too.

React has a deliberately inconvenient API for injecting unsanitized HTML markup straight into the DOM:

    <div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: "Some raw HTML" }}></div>

https://reactjs.org/docs/dom-elements.html#dangerouslysetinn...

Also not quite the same, but `git clean` bails out extremely early unless you supply one of -i, -f, or -n (the latter of which is `--dry-run`).

Perforce’s command line app uses this pattern for one of its most dangerous commands: p4 obliterate //depot/path/... which prints out exactly which files will be obliterated from the server (which not only removes their entire history, but can corrupt other files too if you don’t p4 snap them first).

To actually carry out the obliterate action, you have to add the -y option.

https://github.com/dmerejkowsky/ruplacer

Uses `--go` to confirm.

rm has "--no-preserve-root", which isn't quite "--no-seriously-delete-my-root-directory" but is at least heading in that direction.

if you squint, you can kind of see file permissions as implementing this pattern? rm /usr fails unless you sudo rm /usr

Obligatory Cantrill reference https://youtu.be/wTVfAMRj-7E?t=5046. The whole series of these are well worth a listen.

sed does not operate on files directly unless turned (-i)nteractive.

-i is short for --in-place

Minor quibble the -i option mnemonic is "in-place" rather than "interactive".

oh good one, prettier does the same thing - output to stdout unless --write is set

I only use sed on version controlled files and immediately run git diff afterwards to check the results.

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