[[!comment format=mdwn
 username="joey"
 subject="""comment 2"""
 date="2025-05-14T16:34:22Z"
 content="""
I think arguably dead should be able to operate on paths too. If a user has
lost the only copy of a file, but not deleted the annex link, it would
be easier to use the path than looking up the key.

Since dead refuses to do anything when there's still a recorded location for
a key, there would not be any risk of operating on files whose data has not
been lost.

(There would be some ambiguity, eg "." can refer to both the "here"
repository, or all files in the current directory. For that matter,
the name of a repository could also be ambiguous with a filename.)

Making it reject "here" when provided with additional parameters that are
not repositories would conflict with such a change. 

I realize that it's annoying to make a mistake like you made, but it's also
not hard to undo it once you realize that you've made "here" dead.

A better guard against that mistake might be for it to refuse to mark the
current repository as dead, since it still exists. But there are probably
workflows where a repository gets marked as dead just before `rm -rf` of it,
which that would break.
"""]]
