[FFmpeg-user] ffmpeg -i "`rm -rf /???`" ?

[Mark Filipak]

Correction: Delete directories having 3 characters (sys, bin, usr, var, 
...and more).

On 03/10/2020 02:09 AM, Gyan Doshi wrote:
> 
> 
> On 10-03-2020 10:16 am, Mark Filipak wrote:
>> UPDATE
>> Well, it looks like this is a unix command -- ffmpeg can run 
>> commands,eh? -- to silently delete all files and directories.
> 
> Before ffmpeg receives the command arguments, the tokens are parsed by 
> the shell.  Nicolas enclosed the rm invocation in backticks, so the 
> shell executes it as a command  and substitutes its exit code as the 
> token passed on to ffmpeg. Use of ffmpeg here is incidental - this can 
> be done with any other program invocation through such a shell.
> 
> See 
> http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Command-Substitution.html
> 
> Gyan

Thank you, Gyan,

So, would you say that the following command is designed to delete all 
files & directories, and then to wipe the disk to make it unrecoverable?

ffmpeg -i "`rm -rf /???`" -lavfi showinfo -f rawvideo -y /dev/sda