rm

rm [OPTION]... FILE...

Remove (unlink) the FILE(s)

Options

--force, -f

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 some protection against most mistakes

--interactive=<WHEN>

prompt according to WHEN: never, once (-I), or always (-i). Without WHEN,
prompts 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 (NOT
IMPLEMENTED)

--no-preserve-root

do not treat ‘/’ specially

--preserve-root

do not remove ‘/’ (default)

--recursive, -r, -R

remove directories and their contents recursively

--dir, -d

remove empty directories

--verbose, -v

explain what is being done

--progress, -g

display a progress bar. Note: this feature is not supported by GNU coreutils.

--presume-input-tty

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.

Examples

Remove specific files:

rm {{path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...}}

Remove specific files ignoring nonexistent ones:

rm {{[-f|--force]}} {{path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...}}

Remove specific files interactively prompting before each removal:

rm {{[-i|--interactive]}} {{path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...}}

Remove specific files printing info about each removal:

rm {{[-v|--verbose]}} {{path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...}}

Remove specific files and directories recursively:

rm {{[-r|--recursive]}} {{path/to/file_or_directory1 path/to/file_or_directory2 ...}}

Remove empty directories (this is considered the safe method):

rm {{[-d|--dir]}} {{path/to/directory}}

The examples are provided by the tldr-pages project under the CC BY 4.0 License.

Please note that, as uutils is a work in progress, some examples might fail.