Files On-Demand for macOS QA

I have just updated One Drive and was very confused by all the changes. I found some explanation on thread https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-onedrive-blog/inside-the-new-files-on-demand-experience-on-macos/ba-p/3058922/page/6#comments

However in that thread Jack writes - 

Why is it sometimes slow to browse folders in my OneDrive?

To save space and system resources, the File Provider platform doesn't actually create the files OneDrive is managing until the first time you need them. The first time you open a OneDrive folder, macOS will create them on-demand. This can sometimes take a moment.

To avoid this delay, you can force the system to pre-create all of these files and folders for you without downloading your content. To do this, open a Terminal window and type "ls -alR ~/OneDrive" (or the path to your OneDrive). This will ensure all of your files and folders are created, but not downloaded, before you browse.

I did this and this action started to deleted my files on OneDrive files my computer and online!! After about a half an hour of deleting I realise and terminated the terminal program. This is madness. I think I have a back up of the lost files, but this needs to be quickly amended or else many other users could lose their all their files. 

Tom