Github > Man Page > rm

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | AUTHOR | REPORTING BUGS | COPYRIGHT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

NAME top

        rm - remove files or directories
        

SYNOPSIS top

        rm  [OPTION]... [FILE]...
        

DESCRIPTION top

        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 top

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

                        rm -- -foo
                
                        rm ./-foo

                Note that 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 truly
                unrecoverable, consider using shred.
         

AUTHOR top

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

REPORTING BUGS top

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

COPYRIGHT top

                Copyright © 2020 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 top

                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 top

                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-8.32.tar.xz fetched from
                ⟨http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/⟩ on 2021-08-27.  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