Three things stick out in my mind. First, there's no need to use double-quoted interpolation of $tmp_dir. Just say (-e $tmp_dir) and it will work correctly. It seems like half of the attacks against programs have to do with variable interpolation, so avoid it when you can.

Your use of the list form of system is good, that avoids having the shell interpolate (there's that word again) the argument string. I'm not sure you want the asterisk at the end, as it may remove all of the files in the current working directory, which is hardly what you want. I'd also recommend you look into File::Path instead, specifically the rmtree() function.

In general, I trust built-in functions more than system calls.

Update: Upon quick testing with bash, rm -rf -i dirname/ * does just as I suspected -- removing dirname/ recursively AND all of the files in the current directory. It's up to you.

In reply to RE: Is this system call hazardous for my computers health?? by chromatic
in thread Is this system call hazardous for my computers health?? by zzspectrez

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