It's a programming language that helps you write error-free programs, by self-correcting itself. If it finds an error (exception), it simply deletes the offending code until the program runs without an error.
Suicide Linux - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41748336 - Oct 2024 (1 comment)
Suicide Linux (2009) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24652733 - Oct 2020 (170 comments)
Suicide Linux - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15561987 - Oct 2017 (131 comments)
Suicide Linux (2011) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9401065 - April 2015 (55 comments)
Suicide Linux: Where typos do rm -rf / - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4389931 - Aug 2012 (1 comment)
sudo apt install slWhat systems did this? I've never encountered one that I can recall.
Warren Teitelman originally wrote DWIM to fix his typos and spelling errors, so it was somewhat idiosyncratic to his style, and would often make hash of anyone else's typos if they were stylistically different. Some victims of DWIM thus claimed that the acronym stood for ‘Damn Warren’s Infernal Machine!'.
In one notorious incident, Warren added a DWIM feature to the command interpreter used at Xerox PARC. One day another hacker there typed delete *$ to free up some disk space. (The editor there named backup files by appending $ to the original file name, so he was trying to delete any backup files left over from old editing sessions.) It happened that there weren't any editor backup files, so DWIM helpfully reported *$ not found, assuming you meant 'delete *'. It then started to delete all the files on the disk! The hacker managed to stop it with a Vulcan nerve pinch after only a half dozen or so files were lost.
The disgruntled victim later said he had been sorely tempted to go to Warren's office, tie Warren down in his chair in front of his workstation, and then type delete *$ twice.
DWIM is often suggested in jest as a desired feature for a complex program; it is also occasionally described as the single instruction the ideal computer would have. Back when proofs of program correctness were in vogue, there were also jokes about DWIMC (Do What I Mean, Correctly). A related term, more often seen as a verb, is DTRT (Do The Right Thing); see Right Thing.Fedora and Debian will both dive straight into searching apt/dnf for a matching package and ask "do you want to install this?"
I imagine you could create a hook that gets run for any command failure, but again I'm on my phone so not sure.
I wrote my own (much faster) such handler for Arch Linux. I even wrote a blog post about the design: https://vorpal.se/posts/2025/mar/25/filkoll-the-fastest-comm...
Either that or they were using zsh with autocorrect preinstalled or had somehow rigged up the thefuck to execute and run on any error somehow? Either way seems like a terrible default.
nixpkgs maintainers have found https://github.com/iffse/pay-respects to be a modern replacement
Unfortunately certain commands like `rg` will return non-zero by design when there are no matches, which could be an intentional outcome.
'<cmd> || echo$?' is a good option, if you care about the return value.
I seem to recall an experimental indie game that worked this way. If your character died, a random file on your hard disk was deleted. It was a really interesting idea to highlight our implicit assumptions around what games can and can't do, and a way to raise the stakes of the gameplay experience.
I forgot what it did, but I think it wiped your system out too.
Now I just have to figure out how in the hell to setup bootloading with UBoot for an OrangePI 5 so I can actually start using kernels other than theirs, then I'm set for my next experience crashing system boards with no survivors.
When my juniors ask how I know so much about computers, I can honestly say it's because I am the single most poorly behaved user of other people's code on the planet.