This is a very basic question, and surely has been asked before, but I am having trouble finding the answer or guidance. There are e.g. these but they don't quite hit the mark:
- How to safely remove all files (including hidden files) from current directory (after cding to that directory)?
- Safely define an environment variable
Essentially I just want to remove a temporary directory tree as part of a bash script, like so
rm -rf $my_path
But I'm a bit paranoid that somewhere else in the script it could be possible for $my_path to
expand out into / or something equally bad. For example if somewhere there is my_path=$var1/$var2 and both $var1 and $var2 end up defaulting to empty strings or some such.
What is the best practice way to write this kind of command into a script to avoid accidental enormous problems?
