[Darfk]

Totally agree it shouldn't be for basic tools; but if I'm ever developing a script that performs any kind of logic before reaching out to a DB or vendor API and modifies 100k user records, creating a flag to just verify the sanity of the logic is a necessity.

[Joker_vD]

    if [ -n "$DRY_RUN" ] ; then
        alias rm='echo rm'
        alias cp='echo cp'
    fi

Of course, output redirects will still overwrite the files, since the shell does it and IIRC this behaviour can't be changed.

[digiown]

set -o noclobber

[james_marks]

Yep. First thing I do for this kind thing is make a preview=true flag so I don’t accidentally run destructive actions.

[mycall]

Now I like that idea as an environment variable that takes precedence over the command parameters.