rm(1) rm(1) NAME rm, rmdir - remove files or directories SYNOPSIS rm [-f] [-i] file ... rm -r [-f] [-i] dirname . . . [file . . .] rmdir [-p] [-s] dirname . . . DESCRIPTION rm removes the entries for one or more files from a directory. It does not remove .. and anything above target directory when invoked with an argument which ends in /.. It will print error messages in these cases. If the directory containing the file to be removed has the 'sticky' bit set (see chmod(2)) then in order to remove the file one of the following must be true: the user owns the file, the user owns the directory, or the user is the super-user. If the kernel tunable xpg4_sticky_bit is set to 0 the file will also be removable if it is writable by the user. If a file has no write permission and the standard input is a terminal, the full set of permissions (in octal) for the file are printed followed by a question mark. This is a prompt for confirmation. If the answer begins with y (for yes), the file is deleted, otherwise the file remains. If file is a symbolic link, the link will be removed, but the file or directory to which it refers will not be deleted. A user does not need write permission on a symbolic link to remove it, provided they have write permissions in the directory. Note that if the standard input is not a terminal, the command will operate as if the -f option is in effect. Four options apply to rm: -f This option causes the removal of all files (whether write-protected or not) in a directory without prompting the user. In a write- protected directory, however, files are never removed (whatever their permissions are), but no messages are displayed. If the removal of a write-protected directory is attempted, this option will not suppress an error message. Any previous occurrences of the -i will be ignored. -r This option causes the recursive removal of any directories and subdirectories in the argument list. The directory will be emptied of files and removed. Note that the user is normally prompted for removal of any write-protected files which the directory contains. The write-protected files are removed without prompting, however, if the -f option is used, or if the standard input is not a terminal and the -i option is not used. Symbolic links that are encountered with this option will not be traversed. If the removal of a non-empty, write-protected directory is attempted, the command will always fail (even if the -f option is used), resulting in an error message. -R Same as -r -i With this option, confirmation of removal of any file occurs interactively. Any previous occurrences of the -f option will be ignored. Two options apply to rmdir: -p This option allows users to remove the directory dirname and its parent directories which become empty. A message is printed on standard output about whether the whole path is removed or part of the path remains for some reason. -s This option is used to suppress the message printed on standard error when -p is in effect. FILES /usr/lib/locale/locale/LC_MESSAGES/uxcore.abi language-specific message file [See LANG on environ (5).] SEE ALSO unlink(2), rmdir(2) DIAGNOSTICS All messages are generally self-explanatory. It is forbidden to remove the files "." and ".." in order to avoid the consequences of inadvertently doing something like the following: rm -r .* Both rm and rmdir return exit codes of 0 if all the specified directories are removed successfully. Otherwise, they return a non-zero exit code. NOTES A -- permits the user to mark explicitly the end of any command line options, allowing rm to recognize filename arguments that begin with a -. As an aid to BSD migration, rm will accept - as a synonym for --. This migration aid may disappear in a future release. If a -- and a - both appear on the same command line, the second will be interpreted as a filename. Page 2