That moment my first Python script deleted my own folder

I was practicing on my laptop in a coffee shop in Portland, trying to write a cleanup script that would remove old temp files. I had the paths mixed up and instead of pointing to a temp folder, I pointed it straight at my project folder where I kept all my practice exercises. Hit enter, watched the terminal spit out line after line of deleted files, and it took me maybe 10 seconds to realize what happened. I froze and just stared at the screen, then yanked the power cord since I didn't know how to stop the loop. I lost about 3 weeks of notes and small scripts, but thankfully my big projects were on GitHub. I keep a backup on a USB drive now, and I triple check every path before running anything. Has anyone else nuked something important and found a quick way to recover it before, or was I just extra unlucky?

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roberts953d ago

Did you try any file recovery tools after you yanked the power? I've been in the same boat (not with my own folder, but with a client's database backup once, which was way worse). The trick is to stop using that drive immediately, because new writes can overwrite the deleted files. I had decent luck with PhotoRec on Linux, it got back most of my text files, though the folder structure was a mess. But honestly, the real fix is what you already did, backups and triple-checking paths. I also started writing my scripts to print the target path and ask for a "yes" confirmation before doing anything destructive, it's saved me more than once.