Thanks Charles; It seems that protection against rm ~/* is the practical answer. On Sun, 2007-03-11 at 10:27 -0600, Charles Curley wrote: > On Sun, Mar 11, 2007 at 11:13:18AM -0400, William Case wrote: > > Hi All; > > [snip] > > Both. It's an ancient and honorable Unix tradition based on the notion > that .* files don't normally get into shell expansions. So "rm ~/*" > won't eat all your config files. > It seems everybody has to do that once. I know I did. > It would not be easy to move all the dot files into a config > directory. You would have to co-ordinate that across thousands of apps > and dozens of different Unixes. I think we can depend on $HOME being > available on most Unixes. Getting $HOME/config adopted would be a > major effort. > I thought it was mainly a traditional component. As someone who has only come recently to digging into Operating Systems, I am continually amazed by how much is *not* brand new cutting edge, but rather is generations old, conservative and traditional. > I recommend against putting your own working documents into your home > directory. Instead make one or more sub-directories for them. I have > "business" for business related stuff, invoices and the like, > "projects" and "src", for source code. Each has sub-directories for > individual projects. I find it helps that when I'm working on a given > project I only see the files related to that project. > Yes. I do. But as you say, I always seem to end up with a bunch of cruft in my home directory. > This also means that things in ~ tend to be expendable, making pruning > the cruft very easy. > > > > I am not a complete newbie. After 2 1/2 years of using Linux I am kind > > of a 'gubie' or 'newru'. (Newbie on the way to becoming a guru). So if > > you have an explanation that involves more than newbie baby talk, I can > > handle it. > > Uh, "gnubie"? I like it. 3 bangs (maybe 4) for the buck rather than just 2. -- Regards Bill