chown and bash trashed part of system

[Vincent Chapman]

bash version 3.2.29 and chown version 6.10

Permisions in home folder on hidden directories with root and not
vincent.  

$ sudo chown -R vincent:vincent * 

changed all but the hidden folders, so did not work for this situation

$ sudo chown -R vincent:vincent .*  

Command very bad.  

.* wild card picked up directory entry '..' and like requested chown
descended into sub directories, BUT chown also ascended into parent
directory, in this case home, and descended into all sub directories
thus trashing all permisions in /home/otherguy /home/yetanotherguy and
just for the hell of it, /home/lost+found
  
Luckily I only messed up three user home directories.  Should there be a
filter for '..' that prohibts chown from assending towards / ?



Vincent Chapman