Quotes About Globs

You can use rm -rf dir to delete a directory and its contents, but be careful! This is one of the few commands that can do serious damage, especially if you run it as the superuser. The -r option specifies recursive delete to repeatedly delete everything inside dir, and -f forces the delete operation. Don't use the -rf flags with globs such as a star (*). And above all, always double-check your command before you run it.

The Yherajk were a less immediate but infinitely more complicated problem—alien globs who want to befriend a humanity that, if asked, would probably prefer to be befriended by something with an endoskeleton.