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What's that supposed to be good for?

It certainly doesn't remove any file contents and to get a clean state, surely reformatting would be both easier and quicker?

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Experimentation, learning, having fun, curiosity, and all the thing that make for a proficient sysadmin.

So cargo-cult? Doing things out of "tradition" without understanding what they are for?

Uh no. Not tradition: experimentation, learning, having fun, curiosity, and all the things that make for a proficient sysadmin.

To quote the original post:

> Unix has a long tradition of doing a `rm -rf /` before reinstalling a system. I don't agree with the people saying "don't do that".

So, yes, "tradition".

Actually, no. You might want to experiment on a test system to see what "tradition" actually does. Then you, you know, learn the consequences because you are, you know, curious to understand the result of the operation. And many people find this, well, fun. Normally people who do this sort of thing exhibit the traits that make them a good sysadmin because they are verifying Unix-lore to ensure that they aren't just following some sort of cargo cult methodology.

Hope that helps.

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