Where is rm command

Example 6: Remove Everything from Current Directory If you want to remove everything from the current directory, use the rm command with wildcard character as follows:. Example 7: Remove Empty Directories For removing an empty directory, use the rm command with the -d option as follows:.

Example 8: Remove the Root Directory By default, the rm command does not allow to recursively remove everything from the root directory. However, if you really need to do so, it can be done using the rm command —no-preserve-root option. Then use the xargs to read that list and pass it to the rm command. Example Use Wildcards with rm You can use the wildcard character with the rm command to selectively remove a subset of files.

This command will remove all the files that end with. It allows you to remove files and directories in Linux. In this post, we covered how to use the rm command along with some examples. To view more information, view the rm man page. About the author Karim Buzdar Karim Buzdar holds a degree in telecommunication engineering and holds several sysadmin certifications.

Viewed k times. Improve this question. Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' k gold badges silver badges bronze badges. But I'm not really sure it is as where do files go is quite different from is there a way to undo. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Thanks very much for the clear explanation. I don't mind using the CLI, I just need to be a little more careful when using wildcards.

I'd be cautious with using something like libtrash to change the behavior of rm. Lots of scripts use rm to clean up files and you don't want those showing up in Trash. I recommend using a dedicated command like trash from the trash-cli package.

When I realized what I did I quickly killed the command, but it had already deleted a number of files in my home directory. It is very rare to have a something like a trash can in the shell, so if you add it on you local machine and get used to it or even depend on it in your daily work. I think the take-home message here is that I need to stop CLI'ing in the wee hours and pay better attention. Along the same lines as what Johan said, RedHat used to still does?

This changes the default behavior so those commands will always ask before overwriting existing files. Some sysadmins recommended to specifically remove those aliases so you don't end up expecting that behavior which may end up being lethal when on another system that follow default behavior.

Show 10 more comments. Piskvor left the building Piskvor left the building 5 5 silver badges 9 9 bronze badges. For high-value text data, you can always use any robust general-purpose tool even emacs or perl to look at the "raw device" for the disk that contained the removed file, and search for known strings; I've recovered Word documents for people this way; they lose the mark-up, but can recover most of the text. Obviously this is disaster recovery, not "Undo".

A proper 'manually' link: web. Regarding undoing the effects of rm : Given that most filesystems only remove the reference to the data and indicate that the blocks as free, you could try to locate your data reading directly from the device. Kjetil Jorgensen Kjetil Jorgensen 1, 6 6 silver badges 7 7 bronze badges.

It's slightly more complicated e. This is sometimes called file carving and there are tools like magicrescue that try to find images or sounds by their distinctive patterns. It tells the filesystem to specifically overwrite this file with zeroes on deletion. Only some filesystems will support that attribute. The Spooniest The Spooniest 1 1 silver badge 1 1 bronze badge. Andy Andy 1. This will only work if you have some magic filesystem that provides that feature like a NetApp or if you're using a special version of rm.

Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. This extra dash is necessary so that rm does not misinterpret the file name as an option. For instance, if there is a file in your current directory named " -file. Or, you can delete it by referring to it with a pathname. For instance, if the file " -file. The unlink command essentially does the same thing as rm , but it is defined very strictly by the POSIX standard. It operates on only one file at a time; it does not operate on directories; its behavior is not modified by any command line options.

It does one thing and one thing only: calls the unlink system call on a single file. The version of rm used by most versions of Linux GNU rm has all the options and niceties listed above: safety checks, interactive prompting, conditional deletion, recursive operation. It is similar to unlink in that it makes the unlink system call, but it may also call unlinkat if a specified pathname is relative rather than absolute.

Remove the file myfile. If the file is write-protected, you are prompted to confirm you want it deleted. You will not be prompted, even if the file is write-protected; if rm can delete the file, it will. Remove all files in the working directory. If it is write-protected, you will be prompted before rm removes it.