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<h1 class="SECT1"><a id="FILE-COMMANDS-DELETION" name="FILE-COMMANDS-DELETION">10.6
Deletion: <tt class="COMMAND">rm</tt> and <tt class="COMMAND">rmdir</tt></a></h1>
<div class="SECT2">
<h2 class="SECT2"><a id="AEN3733" name="AEN3733">10.6.1 <tt
class="COMMAND">rm</tt></a></h2>
<p><tt class="COMMAND">rm</tt>(1) removes files and directory trees. DOS users will
notice the similarity to both the <tt class="COMMAND">del</tt> and <tt
class="COMMAND">deltree</tt> commands. <tt class="COMMAND">rm</tt> can be very dangerous
if you do not watch yourself. While it is sometimes possible to retrieve a recently
deleted file, it can be complicated (and potentially costly) and is beyond the scope of
this book.</p>
<p>To remove a single file, specify its name when you run rm:</p>
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<pre class="SCREEN">
<samp class="PROMPT">%</samp> <kbd class="USERINPUT">rm file1</kbd>
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<p>If the file has write permissions removed, you may get a permission denied error
message. To force removal of the file no matter what, pass the <tt
class="COMMAND">-f</tt> option, like this:</p>
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<samp class="PROMPT">%</samp> <kbd class="USERINPUT">rm -f file1</kbd>
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<p>To remove an entire directory, you use the <var class="OPTION">-r</var> and <var
class="OPTION">-f</var> options together. This is a good example of how to delete the
entire contents of your hard drive. You really don't want to do this. But here's the
command anyway:</p>
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<samp class="PROMPT">#</samp> <kbd class="USERINPUT">rm -rf /</kbd>
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<p>Be very careful with <tt class="COMMAND">rm</tt>; you can shoot yourself in the foot.
There are several command line options, which are discussed in detail in the online
manual page.</p>
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<div class="SECT2">
<h2 class="SECT2"><a id="AEN3764" name="AEN3764">10.6.2 <tt
class="COMMAND">rmdir</tt></a></h2>
<p><tt class="COMMAND">rmdir</tt>(1) removes directories from the filesystem. The
directory must be empty before it can be removed. The syntax is simply:</p>
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<samp class="PROMPT">%</samp> <kbd class="USERINPUT">rmdir <<var
class="REPLACEABLE">directory</var>></kbd>
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<p>This example will remove the <tt class="FILENAME">hejaz</tt> subdirectory in the
current working directory:</p>
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<samp class="PROMPT">%</samp> <kbd class="USERINPUT">rmdir hejaz</kbd>
</pre>
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<p>If that directory does not exist, <tt class="COMMAND">rmdir</tt> will tell you. You
can also specify a full path to a directory to remove, as this example shows:</p>
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<samp class="PROMPT">%</samp> <kbd class="USERINPUT">rmdir /tmp/hejaz</kbd>
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<p>That example will try to remove the <tt class="FILENAME">hejaz</tt> directory inside
the <tt class="FILENAME">/tmp</tt> directory.</p>
<p>You can also remove a directory and all of its parent directories by passing the <var
class="OPTION">-p</var> option.</p>
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<samp class="PROMPT">%</samp> <kbd class="USERINPUT">rmdir -p /tmp/hejaz</kbd>
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<p>This will first try to remove the <tt class="FILENAME">hejaz</tt> directory inside <tt
class="FILENAME">/tmp</tt>. If that is successful, it will try to remove <tt
class="FILENAME">/tmp</tt>. <tt class="COMMAND">rmdir</tt> will continue this until an
error is encountered or the entire tree specified is removed.</p>
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