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RM(1) General Commands Manual RM(1) NAME rm, unlink -- remove directory entries SYNOPSIS rm [-f | -i] [-dIRrvWx] file ... unlink [--] file DESCRIPTION The rm utility attempts to remove the non-directory type files speci- fied 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 ex- ist, do not display a diagnostic message or modify the exit status to reflect an error. The -f option overrides any previ- ous -i options. -i Request confirmation before attempting to remove each file, re- gardless of the file's permissions, or whether or not the stan- dard 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 This flag has no effect. It is kept only for backwards compat- ibility with 4.4BSD-Lite2. -R Attempt to remove the file hierarchy rooted in each file argu- ment. The -R option implies the -d option. If the -i option is specified, the user is prompted for confirmation before each directory's contents are processed (as well as before the at- tempt is made to remove the directory). If the user does not respond affirmatively, the file hierarchy rooted in that direc- tory is skipped. -r Equivalent to -R. -v Be verbose when deleting files, showing them as they are re- moved. -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. However, the usual option-end delimiter, --, may op- tionally precede the 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 EXAMPLES Recursively remove all files contained within the foobar directory hi- erarchy: $ rm -rf foobar Any of these commands will remove the file -f: $ rm -- -f $ rm ./-f $ unlink -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. The -P option does not have any effect as of FreeBSD 13 and may be re- moved in the future. SEE ALSO chflags(1), rmdir(1), undelete(2), unlink(2), fts(3), getopt(3), symlink(7) STANDARDS The rm command conforms to . 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. FreeBSD 13.2 November 10, 2018 RM(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | EXIT STATUS | NOTES | EXAMPLES | COMPATIBILITY | SEE ALSO | STANDARDS | HISTORY
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