But What Did "Safety" Mean?

• But what was this 3rd parameter supposed to mean?

        a boolean value, which if TRUE will cause C<rmtree> to
        skip any files to which you do not have delete access
        (if running under VMS) or write access (if running
        under another OS).  This will change in the future when
        a criterion for 'delete permission' under OSs other
        than VMS is settled. (defaults to FALSE)

• Inference: Original authors sensed there might be security problems with rmtree()

  • But hadn't settled on a way to address them

  • This ambiguous documentation was present at least up through Perl 5.8.1