I have a zip archive which is a backup of my old hard drive which I disposed of. I frequently access files from it, but the problem is that the archive is so big that it takes a very long time to extract the file, no matter how small it is. So I decided to delete some of the large unnecessary files on the archive.

I double clicked the archive and it opened up the graphical tool for viewing archives, showing all the files and folders. I right clicked on a folder I wanted to delete, and clicked the "delete" option on the context menu that appeared. Then a dialog box popped up, with radio buttons for "delete selected files" and "delete everything". "Delete selected files" was selected by default, but I thought this meant that it would open up some kind window where it would make me select the files within the folder to delete. I just wanted the folder and everything in it deleted so I selected "delete everything".

I did this and it DELETED ALL THE FILES IN THE ENTIRE ARCHIVE. My archive was blank and there was no way to recover it. I would have been ok if it had just deleted all the "siblings" of the folder I selected (even though it's not what I intended), but the problem is that it deleted the parents too! It really deleted EVERYTHING.

Why the hell would someone make this an option? Who right clicks a folder, clicks "delete", with the intention of wiping the entire archive blank?

By the way: Afterwards I tested the "delete selected files" option on another archive, and confirm that this did exactly what I wanted. This demonstrates that this was not just a case of someone overlooking something or making a general dialog open because they were too lazy to make a specific one. Someone actually, consciously decided to present the user with those 2 options. I hate programmer scum so much.