Discussion on: Mastering rm command

I just commented this on another post, I thought it might fit here too.
As you perfectly said:

using -rf flag, verify you're in the right directory by using $ pwd command, then proceed to delete files.

If you want to prevent deleting any important directory via rm -rf <directory/>*, there is a neat trick.

Create a file named -i in all directories you want to protect. This can be done using
touch -- -i
or
touch ./-i

The * in rm -r * will expand the -i File to the command line, so your command ultimately becomes
rm -rf -i
Thus rm will prompt you before deleting anything. You can put this file in your /, /home/, /etc/, and so on.
Example:

rha@vm:/tmp/rmtest$ touch foobar
rha@vm:/tmp/rmtest$ ls
foobar
rha@vm:/tmp/rmtest$ touch -- -i
rha@vm:/tmp/rmtest$ ls
-i  foobar
rha@vm:/tmp/rmtest$ rm -r *
rm: remove regular empty file 'foobar'? ^C