RM(1) General Commands Manual RM(1)NAME
rm, rmdir - remove (unlink) files
SYNOPSIS
rm [ -fri ] file ...
rmdir dir ...
DESCRIPTION
Rm removes the entries for one or more files from a directory. If an entry was the last link to the file, the file is destroyed. Removal
of a file requires write permission in its directory, but neither read nor write permission on the file itself.
If a file has no write permission and the standard input is a terminal, its permissions are printed and a line is read from the standard
input. If that line begins with `y' the file is deleted, otherwise the file remains. No questions are asked when the -f (force) option is
given.
If a designated file is a directory, an error comment is printed unless the optional argument -r has been used. In that case, rm recur-
sively deletes the entire contents of the specified directory, and the directory itself.
If the -i (interactive) option is in effect, rm asks whether to delete each file, and, under -r, whether to examine each directory.
Rmdir removes entries for the named directories, which must be empty.
SEE ALSO unlink(2)DIAGNOSTICS
Generally self-explanatory. It is forbidden to remove the file `..' merely to avoid the antisocial consequences of inadvertently doing
something like `rm -r .*'.
RM(1)
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rm(1) General Commands Manual rm(1)NAME
rm - remove files or directories
SYNOPSIS
file ...
DESCRIPTION
The command removes the entries for one or more files from a directory. If an entry was the last link to the file, the file is destroyed.
Removal of a file requires write and search (execute) permission in its directory, but no permissions on the file itself. However, if the
sticky bit is set on the directory containing the file, only the owner of the file, the owner of the directory, or a user having appropri-
ate privileges can remove the file.
If a user does not have write permission for a file to be removed and standard input is a terminal, a prompt containing the file name and
its permissions is printed requesting that the removal of the file be confirmed (see Access Control Lists below). A line is then read from
standard input. If that line begins with the file is deleted; otherwise, the file remains. No questions are asked when the option is
given or if standard input is not a terminal.
If file is of type directory, and the option is not specified, and either the permissions of file do not permit writing and standard input
is a terminal or the option is specified, writes a prompt to standard error and reads a line from standard input. If the response does not
begin with it does nothing more with the current file and goes on to any remaining files.
If file is a symbolic link, then only the symbolic link is removed. The file or directory pointed to by the symbolic link is not affected.
If any of the intermediate path components of file happens to be a symbolic link, then follows the symbolic link and removes the file.
Options
recognizes the following options:
Force each file or directory to be removed
without prompting for confirmation, regardless of the permissions of the entry. This option also suppresses diagnostic mes-
sages regarding nonexistent operands.
This option does not suppress any diagnostic messages other than those regarding nonexistent operands. To suppress all error
message and interactive prompts, the option should be used while redirecting standard error output to
This option ignores any previous occurrence of the option.
Write a prompt to standard error
requesting confirmation before removing each entry.
This option ignores any previous occurrence of the option.
For each argument that is a directory, this option causes
to recursively delete the entire contents of that directory before removing the directory itself. When used in conjunction
with the option, asks whether to examine each directory before interactively removing files in that directory and again
afterward to confirm removing the directory itself.
The option will descend to arbitrary depths in a file hierarchy and will not fail due to path length limitations unless the
length of file name, specified by the user exceeds system limitations.
Equivalent to
Access Control Lists
If a file has optional ACL entries, displays a plus sign after the file's permissions. The permissions shown summarize the file's value
returned by (see stat(2)). See also acl(5).
EXTERNAL INFLUENCES
Environment Variables
provides a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. If is unset or null, the default value of "C" (see
lang(5)) is used. If any of the internationalization variables contains an invalid setting, will behave as if all internationalization
variables are set to "C". See environ(5).
If set to a non-empty string value, overrides the values of all the other internationalization variables.
determines the interpretation of file names as single and/or multi-byte characters, the classification of characters as printable, and the
characters matched by character class expressions in regular expressions.
determines the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error and informa-
tive messages written to standard output.
determines the location of message catalogues for the processing of
International Code Set Support
Single- and multibyte character code sets are supported.
DIAGNOSTICS
Generally self-explanatory. Note that the option does not suppress all diagnostic messages.
It is forbidden to remove the file in order to avoid the consequences of using a command such as:
If a designated file is a directory, an error comment is printed unless the or option is used.
RETURN VALUE
exits with one of the following values:
If the option is not specified, 0 is returned only if all the named directory entries (the arguments specified in the command) are
removed.
If the option is specified, then all the existing named directory entries are removed. If any of the named directory entries
are non-existent, still returns a zero.
An error occurred.
EXAMPLES
Remove files with a prompt for verification:
Remove all the files in a directory:
Note that the previous command removes files only, and does not remove any directories in
Remove a file in the current directory whose name starts with or or some other character that is special to the shell:
etc.
Remove a file in the current directory whose name starts with some strange (usually nonprinting, invisible) character or perhaps has spaces
at the beginning or end of the filename, prompting for confirmation:
If is not unique in the directory, enter when each of the other files is prompted.
A powerful and dangerous command to remove a directory is:
or
which removes all files and directories from without any prompting for verification to remove the files or the directories. This command
should only be used when you are absolutely certain that all the files and directories in as well as itself are to be removed.
DEPENDENCIES
NFS
does not display a plus sign to indicate the existence of optional access control list entries when asking for confirmation before removing
a networked file.
SEE ALSO rmdir(1), unlink(2), acl(5).
STANDARDS CONFORMANCE rm(1)