Why Was "Traditional" rmtree() Given Superpowers?

• Answer: Accommodate needs of CPAN.pm

• Andreas Koenig (author and maintainer) wrote perl5-porters list (comments slightly rearranged):

        CPAN.pm relies on rmtree to do a better job than 'rm -rf', i.e. definitely
        remove a complete tree without a hiccups.

        The current File::Path::rmtree has an undocumented feature that
        bothers me as it stands: on some systems (but not on UNIX) before
        removing a file or directory, permissions are changed to
        read/writeable.

        I'd prefer to have consistent semantics on all platforms. My patch
        treats the third parameter ($safe) in a way that matches the current
        description in the pods better. This means, on all systems a chmod +rw
        is tried before removing a file or directory unless the $safe
        parameter is specified.