RM(1)							    BSD General Commands Manual 						     RM(1)

NAME

     rm, unlink -- remove directory entries

SYNOPSIS

     rm [-f | -i] [-dIPRrvWx] file ...
     unlink file

DESCRIPTION

     The rm utility attempts to remove the non-directory type files specified on the command line.  If the permissions of the file do not permit
     writing, and the standard input device is a terminal, the user is prompted (on the standard error output) for confirmation.

     The options are as follows:

     -d      Attempt to remove directories as well as other types of files.

     -f      Attempt to remove the files without prompting for confirmation, regardless of the file's permissions.  If the file does not exist, do
	     not display a diagnostic message or modify the exit status to reflect an error.  The -f option overrides any previous -i options.

     -i      Request confirmation before attempting to remove each file, regardless of the file's permissions, or whether or not the standard
	     input device is a terminal.  The -i option overrides any previous -f options.

     -I      Request confirmation once if more than three files are being removed or if a directory is being recursively removed.  This is a far
	     less intrusive option than -i yet provides almost the same level of protection against mistakes.

     -P      Overwrite regular files before deleting them.  Files are overwritten three times, first with the byte pattern 0xff, then 0x00, and
	     then 0xff again, before they are deleted.	Files with multiple links will not be overwritten nor deleted and a warning will be
	     issued.  If the -f option is specified, files with multiple links will also be overwritten and deleted.  No warning will be issued.

	     Specifying this flag for a read only file will cause rm to generate an error message and exit.  The file will not be removed or over-
	     written.

	     N.B.: The -P flag is not considered a security feature (see BUGS).

     -R      Attempt to remove the file hierarchy rooted in each file argument.  The -R option implies the -d option.  If the -i option is speci-
	     fied, the user is prompted for confirmation before each directory's contents are processed (as well as before the attempt is made to
	     remove the directory).  If the user does not respond affirmatively, the file hierarchy rooted in that directory is skipped.

     -r      Equivalent to -R.

     -v      Be verbose when deleting files, showing them as they are removed.

     -W      Attempt to undelete the named files.  Currently, this option can only be used to recover files covered by whiteouts in a union file
	     system (see undelete(2)).

     -x      When removing a hierarchy, do not cross mount points.

     The rm utility removes symbolic links, not the files referenced by the links.

     It is an error to attempt to remove the files /, . or ...

     When the utility is called as unlink, only one argument, which must not be a directory, may be supplied.  No options may be supplied in this
     simple mode of operation, which performs an unlink(2) operation on the passed argument.

EXIT STATUS

     The rm utility exits 0 if all of the named files or file hierarchies were removed, or if the -f option was specified and all of the existing
     files or file hierarchies were removed.  If an error occurs, rm exits with a value >0.

NOTES

     The rm command uses getopt(3) to parse its arguments, which allows it to accept the '--' option which will cause it to stop processing flag
     options at that point.  This will allow the removal of file names that begin with a dash ('-').  For example:

	   rm -- -filename

     The same behavior can be obtained by using an absolute or relative path reference.  For example:

	   rm /home/user/-filename
	   rm ./-filename

     When -P is specified with -f the file will be overwritten and removed even if it has hard links.

EXAMPLES

     Recursively remove all files contained within the foobar directory hierarchy:

	   $ rm -rf foobar

     Either of these commands will remove the file -f:

	   $ rm -- -f
	   $ rm ./-f

COMPATIBILITY

     The rm utility differs from historical implementations in that the -f option only masks attempts to remove non-existent files instead of
     masking a large variety of errors.  The -v option is non-standard and its use in scripts is not recommended.

     Also, historical BSD implementations prompted on the standard output, not the standard error output.

SEE ALSO

     chflags(1), rmdir(1), undelete(2), unlink(2), fts(3), getopt(3), symlink(7)

STANDARDS

     The rm command conforms to IEEE Std 1003.2 (``POSIX.2'').

     The simplified unlink command conforms to Version 2 of the Single UNIX Specification (``SUSv2'').

HISTORY

     A rm command appeared in Version 1 AT&T UNIX.

BUGS

     The -P option assumes that the underlying storage overwrites file blocks when data is written to an existing offset.  Several factors includ-
     ing the file system and its backing store could defeat this assumption.  This includes, but is not limited to file systems that use a Copy-
     On-Write strategy (e.g. ZFS or UFS when snapshots are being used), Flash media that are using a wear leveling algorithm, or when the backing
     datastore does journaling, etc.  In addition, only regular files are overwritten, other types of files are not.

BSD
								  April 25, 2013							       BSD