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Manual Reference Pages  - RM (1)

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rm - remove files or directories

CONTENTS

Synopsis
Description
Environment
Notes

rm [options] file...

POSIX options: [-fiRr] [--]

GNU options (shortest form): [-dfirvR] [--help] [--version] [--]

rm removes each given file. By default, it does not remove directories. But when the -r or -R option is given, the entire directory tree below the specified directory is removed (and there are no limitations on the depth of directory trees that can be removed by ‘rm -r’). It is an error when the last path component of file is either . or .. (so as to avoid unpleasant surprises with ‘rm -r .*’ or so).

If the -i option is given, or if a file is unwritable, standard input is a terminal, and the -f option is not given, rm prompts the user for whether to remove the file, writing a question to stderr and reading an answer from stdin. If the response is not affirmative, the file is skipped.

-f	Do not prompt for confirmation. Do not write diagnostic messages. Do not produce an error return status if the only errors were non-existent files.
-i	Prompt for confirmation. (In case both -f and -i are given, the last one given takes effect.)
-r or -R
	Recursively remove directory trees.
--	Terminate option list.

The System V Interface Definition forbids removal of the last link to an executable binary file that is being executed.

The GNU implementation (in fileutils-3.16) is broken in the sense that there is an upper limit to the depth of hierarchies that can be removed. (If necessary, a utility ‘deltree’ can be used to remove very deep trees.)

-d, --directory
	Remove directories with unlink(2) instead of rmdir(2), and don’t require a directory to be empty before trying to unlink it. Only works if you have appropriate privileges. Because unlinking a directory causes any files in the deleted directory to become unreferenced, it is wise to fsck(8) 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 is not affirmative, 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.
--	Terminate option list.

The variables LANG, LC_ALL, LC_COLLATE, LC_CTYPE and LC_MESSAGES have the usual meaning.

POSIX.2, except for the limitation on file hierarchy depth.

This page describes rm as found in the fileutils-4.0 package; other versions may differ slightly.

Sometimes one wishes to recover deleted files. It helps to have backups. It helps to use a trash directory, so that removed files are only moved to the trash. But actually removed files, although gone in principle, can sometimes be recovered. For details for the ext2 filesystem, see the Ext2fs-Undeletion mini-Howto.