Linux rm Command and Examples

This post will guide you how to use the rm command under Linux operating system. and it will give you introduction for rm command . rm command options, and linux rm command Description, and Linux rm command examples.

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.

GNU coreutils online help: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/> Report rm translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/>