NAME¶

rm - Remove (unlink) the FILE(s)

SYNOPSIS¶

rm [-f|--force] [-i ] [-I ] [--interactive] [--one-file-system] [--no-preserve-root] [--preserve-root] [-r|--recursive] [-d|--dir] [-v|--verbose] [-g|--progress] [-h|--help] [-V|--version] [files]

DESCRIPTION¶

Remove (unlink) the FILE(s)

OPTIONS¶

-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 some protection against most mistakes

--interactive[=<WHEN>]

prompt according to WHEN: never, once (-I), or always (-i). Without WHEN, prompts always

Possible values:

--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 (NOT IMPLEMENTED)

--no-preserve-root

do not treat '/' specially

--preserve-root

do not remove '/' (default)

-r, --recursive

remove directories and their contents recursively

-d, --dir

remove empty directories

-v, --verbose

explain what is being done

-g, --progress

display a progress bar. Note: this feature is not supported by GNU coreutils.

-h, --help

Print help

-V, --version

Print version

[files]

EXTRA¶

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.

VERSION¶

v(uutils coreutils) 0.9.0

EXAMPLES¶

Remove specific files:

rm path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...

Remove specific files ignoring nonexistent ones:

rm [-f|--force] path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...

Remove specific files interactively prompting before each removal:

rm [-i|--interactive] path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...

Remove specific files printing info about each removal:

rm [-v|--verbose] path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...

Remove specific files and directories recursively:

rm [-r|--recursive] path/to/file_or_directory1 path/to/file_or_directory2 ...

Remove empty directories (this is considered the safe method):

rm [-d|--dir] path/to/directory

The examples are provided by the tldr-pages project <https://tldr.sh> under the CC BY 4.0 License. Please note that, as uutils is a work in progress, some examples might fail.