Computing Life

The background is, I have a git repo of nodejs code. There is a controllers folder in the repo, which I just made some (well, a lot of) changes and am about to commit the staged changes.

Then in the root folder of the repo, I suddenly have an urge to check the upload folder:

➜ server git:(master) ✗ ls uploads 
0_0_1386887901885.jpg 0_0_1386887901885.txt 17_17_1386623141156.jpg 17_17_1386623141156.txt 8_8_1386622199071.jpg 8_8_1386622199071.txt

Hmmm, some random files. Why not just delete all of them?

➜ server git:(master) ✗ rm *
zsh: sure you want to delete all the files in /home/grapeot/PhotoSwarm/src/server/server [yn]? y
rm: cannot remove `controllers': Is a directory
rm: cannot remove `node_modules': Is a directory
rm: cannot remove `public': Is a directory
rm: cannot remove `uploads': Is a directory
rm: cannot remove `views': Is a directory

Oops.

Did I just remove all the files in the root folder instead of the upload folder?

Looks so. WHAT???

WHAT??? All my codes are gone???

Actually it's not too bad right now. Because the files in the root folder are all backed by git, while .git is a folder and is hidden, which prevents rm * removing it. And the newly changed files in controllers are not affected at all, although they are not staged, which means they haven't been protected by git yet.

And in a hurry, I immediately took measures to recover the files from git:

➜ server git:(master) ✗ git reset --hard HEAD
HEAD is now at 85f95f2 add a new controller for the mjpeg stream

Yeah all the files in the root folder are recovered! Long live the git!

Wait...

Wait... What's here in controllers?

The old files?

Oh shit I just overwrote the unstaged changes!

And they cannot be retrieved back because it's overwriting, not deleting!

当时满脑子想的都是。。自作孽不可活啊。。

So the lessons are: 1) Stop doing anything when an emergency happens. Think twice before you act. 2) Use trash-cli instead of native rm. An alias may help.

P.S. The final ending is I rewrote the patch in 15 min. It's much faster because the memory was still fresh.