NAME¶
rm - remove files or directories
SYNOPSIS¶
rm [
OPTION]...
FILE...
DESCRIPTION¶
This manual page documents the GNU version of
rm.
rm removes each
specified file. By default, it does not remove directories.
If the
-I or
--interactive=once option is given, and there are
more than three files or the
-r,
-R, or
--recursive are
given, then
rm prompts the user for whether to proceed with the entire
operation. If the response is not affirmative, the entire command is aborted.
Otherwise, if a file is unwritable, standard input is a terminal, and the
-f or
--force option is not given, or the
-i or
--interactive=always option is given,
rm prompts the user for
whether to remove the file. If the response is not affirmative, the file is
skipped.
OPTIONS¶
Remove (unlink) the FILE(s).
- -f, --force
- ignore nonexistent files and arguments, never prompt
- -i
- prompt before every removal
- -I
- prompt once before removing more than three files, or when removing
recursively; less intrusive than -i, while still giving protection
against most mistakes
- --interactive[=WHEN]
- prompt according to WHEN: never, once (-I), or always ( -i);
without WHEN, prompt always
- --one-file-system
- when removing a hierarchy recursively, skip any directory that is on a
file system different from that of the corresponding command line
argument
- --no-preserve-root
- do not treat '/' specially
- --preserve-root
- do not remove '/' (default)
- -r, -R, --recursive
- remove directories and their contents recursively
- -d, --dir
- remove empty directories
- -v, --verbose
- explain what is being done
- --help
- display this help and exit
- --version
- output version information and exit
By default, rm does not remove directories. Use the
--recursive
(
-r or
-R) option to remove each listed directory, too, along
with all of its contents.
To remove a file whose name starts with a '-', for example '-foo', use one of
these commands:
- rm -- -foo
- rm ./-foo
Note that if you use rm to remove a file, it might be possible to recover some
of its contents, given sufficient expertise and/or time. For greater assurance
that the contents are truly unrecoverable, consider using shred.
AUTHOR¶
Written by Paul Rubin, David MacKenzie, Richard M. Stallman, and Jim Meyering.
REPORTING BUGS¶
GNU coreutils online help: <
http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report rm translation bugs to <
http://translationproject.org/team/>
COPYRIGHT¶
Copyright © 2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL
version 3 or later <
http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO
WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
SEE ALSO¶
unlink(1),
unlink(2),
chattr(1),
shred(1)
Full documentation at: <
http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/rm>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) rm invocation'