Info Catalog coreutils: mv invocation coreutils: Basic operations coreutils: shred invocation

coreutils: rm invocation

 
 11.5 ‘rm’: Remove files or directories
 ======================================
 
 ‘rm’ removes each given FILE.  By default, it does not remove
 directories.  Synopsis:
 
      rm [OPTION]... [FILE]...
 
    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.
 
    Any attempt to remove a file whose last file name component is ‘.’ or
 ‘..’ is rejected without any prompting, as mandated by POSIX.
 
    _Warning_: If you use ‘rm’ to remove a file, it is usually possible
 to recover the contents of that file.  If you want more assurance that
 the contents are truly unrecoverable, consider using ‘shred’.
 
    The program accepts the following options.  Also see Common
 options.
 
 ‘-d’
 ‘--dir’
      Remove the listed directories if they are empty.
 
 ‘-f’
 ‘--force’
      Ignore nonexistent files and missing operands, and never prompt the
      user.  Ignore any previous ‘--interactive’ (‘-i’) option.
 
 ‘-i’
      Prompt whether to remove each file.  If the response is not
      affirmative, the file is skipped.  Ignore any previous ‘--force’
      (‘-f’) option.  Equivalent to ‘--interactive=always’.
 
 ‘-I’
      Prompt once whether to proceed with the command, if more than three
      files are named or if a recursive removal is requested.  Ignore any
      previous ‘--force’ (‘-f’) option.  Equivalent to
      ‘--interactive=once’.
 
 ‘--interactive [=WHEN]’
      Specify when to issue an interactive prompt.  WHEN may be omitted,
      or one of:
         • never - Do not prompt at all.
         • once - Prompt once if more than three files are named or if a
           recursive removal is requested.  Equivalent to ‘-I’.
         • always - Prompt for every file being removed.  Equivalent to
           ‘-i’.
      ‘--interactive’ with no WHEN is equivalent to
      ‘--interactive=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.
 
      This option is useful when removing a build “chroot” hierarchy,
      which normally contains no valuable data.  However, it is not
      uncommon to bind-mount ‘/home’ into such a hierarchy, to make it
      easier to use one’s start-up file.  The catch is that it’s easy to
      forget to unmount ‘/home’.  Then, when you use ‘rm -rf’ to remove
      your normally throw-away chroot, that command will remove
      everything under ‘/home’, too.  Use the ‘--one-file-system’ option,
      and it will warn about and skip directories on other file systems.
      Of course, this will not save your ‘/home’ if it and your chroot
      happen to be on the same file system.
 
 ‘--preserve-root’
      Fail upon any attempt to remove the root directory, ‘/’, when used
      with the ‘--recursive’ option.  This is the default behavior.
      Treating / specially.
 
 ‘--no-preserve-root’
      Do not treat ‘/’ specially when removing recursively.  This option
      is not recommended unless you really want to remove all the files
      on your computer.  Treating / specially.
 
 ‘-r’
 ‘-R’
 ‘--recursive’
      Remove the listed directories and their contents recursively.
 
 ‘-v’
 ‘--verbose’
      Print the name of each file before removing it.
 
    One common question is how to remove files whose names begin with a
 ‘-’.  GNU ‘rm’, like every program that uses the ‘getopt’ function to
 parse its arguments, lets you use the ‘--’ option to indicate that all
 following arguments are non-options.  To remove a file called ‘-f’ in
 the current directory, you could type either:
 
      rm -- -f
 
 or:
 
      rm ./-f
 
    The Unix ‘rm’ program’s use of a single ‘-’ for this purpose predates
 the development of the ‘getopt’ standard syntax.
 
    An exit status of zero indicates success, and a nonzero value
 indicates failure.
 

Info Catalog coreutils: mv invocation coreutils: Basic operations coreutils: shred invocation