rm(1) — Linux manual page

RM(1)                         User Commands                        RM(1)

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[=all]
              do not remove '/' (default); with 'all', reject any
              command line argument on a separate device from its parent

       -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.

       Any attempt to remove a file whose last file name component is
       '.' or '..'  is rejected with a diagnostic.

       To remove a file whose name starts with a '-', for example
       '-foo', use one of these commands:

              rm -- -foo

              rm ./-foo

       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 unrecoverable,
       consider using shred(1).

AUTHOR

       Written by Paul Rubin, David MacKenzie, Richard M. Stallman, and
       Jim Meyering.

REPORTING BUGS

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

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright © 2024 Free Software Foundation, Inc.  License GPLv3+:
       GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
       This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute
       it.  There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

SEE ALSO

       unlink(1), unlink(2), chattr(1), shred(1)

       Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/rm>
       or available locally via: info '(coreutils) rm invocation'

COLOPHON

       This page is part of the coreutils (basic file, shell and text
       manipulation utilities) project.  Information about the project
       can be found at ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩.  If you
       have a bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the tarball coreutils-9.5.tar.xz fetched from
       ⟨http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/⟩ on 2024-06-14.  If you
       discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page,
       or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for
       the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
       information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original
       manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

GNU coreutils 9.5              March 2024                          RM(1)

Pages that refer to this page: rmdir(2), unlink(2), remove(3), mq_overview(7), symlink(7), debugfs(8), lsof(8)

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