I learned something new today, anyone tell me what this is:


\rm -rf mydir


I was having a hard time deleting a directory with just the standard rm -rf mydir command and someone told me to put a backslash in front of the rm command! and it worked, didn't ask me any questions, just did. SO why is that? what else does that work on?


Thanks

The person you were talking thought of the possibility that you have an alias by the name of "rm" that is doing something other than what the original "rm" command does.

By typing "\rm -rf mydir", you were bypassing any aliases and just using the original "rm" command.

For example, I could set up an alias like so:
alias rm 'rm -i'
and then every time I use rm, I'll automatically be using the -i flag.

But if I don't want to use the alias with the -i flag, I can type "\rm" instead of "rm".

Check out this link:
BU -Making Life Easy with Aliases