NAME
rm—Remove files
SYNOPSIS
rm [-dfirvR] [–directory] [–force] [–interactive] [–recursive] [–help] [–version] [–verbose] name…
DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents the GNU version of rm. rm removes each specified file. By default, it does not remove directories. If a file is unwritable, the standard input is a tty, and the -f or –force option is not given, rm prompts the user for whether to remove the file. If the response does not begin with y or Y, the file is skipped.
GNU rm, like every program that uses the getopt function to parse its arguments, lets you use the — option to indicate that all following arguments are nonoptions. To remove a file called -f in the current directory, you could type either
rm — -f
or
rm ./-f
The UNIX rm program’s use of a single – for this purpose predates the development of the getopt standard syntax.
OPTIONS
Options | Description |
-d, –directory | Remove directories with unlink instead of rmdir, and don’t require a directory to be empty before trying to unlink it. Only works for the superuser. Because unlinking a directory causes any files in the deleted directory to become unreferenced, it is wise to fsck the filesystem after doing this. |
-f, –force | Ignore nonexistent files and never prompt the user. |
-i, –interactive | Prompt whether to remove each file. If the response does not begin with y or Y, the file is skipped. |
-r, -R, –recursive | Remove the contents of directories recursively. |
-v, –verbose | Print the name of each file before removing it. |
–help | Print a usage message on standard output and exit successfully. |
–version | Print version information on standard output, then exit successfully. |
0 Comments