Inadvertently deleted user folder with terminal command - HELP!

Hi
I was using terminal to delete my hosts file using the following command:
sudo rm -rf /Users/xxx/.ssh/known_hosts
Unfortunalely, I misplaced a space after the username, and deleted most of my user files. I thought something weird was happening when all the desktop icons dissappeared, and restarted immediately.
Now I am missing all of my docs, and desktop files. Some things are preserved, like itunes library and iPhoto library. My backup is over 6 months old.
I took out the hdd, put in an external enclosure, and hooked it up to another SL machine. I ran stellar phoenix overnight, but the recovered files all seem to be weird system files, mostly .plist files, nothing recent.
Any suggestions?
Thanks

ro-76 wrote:
Thanks for the reply.
My main backup is over 6 months old.
then I suggest you start backing up regularly. there is no excuse not to do it.
I use dropbox to backup the stuff I'm working on at the moment, but not the older stuff.
I found it strange that I could not recover anything with Stellar Phoenix. Is there something special about deleting using terminal? Does it completely erase the file?
not unless you use srm which you didn't. but NOT data recover software as you tried is perfect nor can it be expected to be. when you delete a file either from finder or from terminal it's unlinked from the directory but the actual space it's stored on the drive is not immediately overwritten by new data. that's what makes data recovery even possible. however, from that moment on it's treated as free space and can be overwritten at any instant. as soon as this happens data recovery becomes impossible. the only true way to protect your data is to *back up*.
I'll try Data Rescue 3.

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