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Questions tagged [rm]

rm is the POSIX command to remove and delete files or directories.

262 questions
568
votes
14 answers

How do I make rm not give an error if a file doesn't exist?

I'm writing a makefile that will clean up some useless files at the end of the compilation. If a target has already been made, it will of course skip that target and the useless file may not be there. So if I do this: rm lexer.ml interpparse.ml…
Jason Baker
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203
votes
9 answers

How far will you get with an 'rm -rf /' command?

I've often wondered how far the system will actually get if you run rm -rf /. I doubt the OS would be able to erase itself (?) Bonus Question: After the command has been executed, will rm have removed itself? Update: I've tested this in a couple of…
nopcorn
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132
votes
17 answers

How to delete all files in a directory except some?

I need to delete all files in a directory, but exclude some of them. For example, in a directory with the files a b c ... z, I need to delete all except for u and p. Is there an easy way to do this?
Ashot
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120
votes
11 answers

Undo an "rm -rf ~" command?

I had a folder I didn't want named '~', so from the command line I typed rm -rf ~ and accidentally deleted my home folder (since ~ resolved to /home/username). Is there any way back or do I basically need to recreate the account from scratch?
Chris
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101
votes
3 answers

Does rm -rf follow symbolic links?

I have a directory like this: $ ls -l total 899166 drwxr-xr-x 12 me scicomp 324 Jan 24 13:47 data -rw-r--r-- 1 me scicomp 84188 Jan 24 13:47 lod-thin-1.000000-0.010000-0.030000.rda drwxr-xr-x 2 me scicomp 808 Jan 24 13:47…
Greg
  • 1,199
98
votes
6 answers

Delete files with regular expression

I Tried to delete files that starts with A and ends with 2 numbers but It doesn't do a thing. What I tried: rm ^A*[0..9]2$ Where am I wrong?
gdoron
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72
votes
15 answers

How to recover a removed file under Linux?

By accident, I used rm on a file I didn't want to delete. Is there a way that I can get it back under Linux?
HaiYuan Zhang
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68
votes
12 answers

What command do I need to use to remove a file called `-rf`?

I did something crazy at some point that created a file called -rf on my filesystem. Now I can't figure out how to delete it... I've tried: rm "-rf" rm \-rf These just exit immediately, arrgh! Anyone know how to remove this file? Preferably…
Pierre-Antoine LaFayette
  • 1,127
67
votes
14 answers

Trying to delete directory with "rm -rf", but get message that it's not empty

I've tried deleting a directory using "rm -rf" and I'm getting the message "Directory not empty": Bens-MacBook-Pro:please benjaminhocking$ ls -lart empty_directory/ total 16 drwxr-xr-x 5 benjaminhocking staff 170 Aug 27 14:46 . drwxr-xr-x 3…
Ben Hocking
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46
votes
3 answers

Is there a scenario where rm -rf --no-preserve-root is needed?

I've seen some questions on here where people accidentally do rm -rf --no-preserve-root or rm -rf *, wiping out most or all of their file system before they can react. Is there ever a reason to use --no-preserve-root, whether in normal use, as a…
Nzall
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42
votes
5 answers

Linux – cannot remove owned file with 777 permissions

I've couple of files that I cannot remove using rf -Rf command. I'm the owner of those file and the group assigned to those files is also a group my user is in. What's even weirder is that I can edit their content and I can change the permissions…
RaYell
  • 1,164
38
votes
5 answers

Deleting millions of files

I had a dir fill up with millions of gif images. Too many for rm command. I have been trying the find command like this: find . -name "*.gif" -print0 | xargs -0 rm Problem is, it bogs down my machine really bad, and causes time outs for customers…
Corepuncher
  • 481
37
votes
3 answers

Mac -- remove all files with a certain extension from a directory tree

Possible Duplicate: Delete files recursively matching a name on the command line (OS X) I want to remove all files with extension .orig from my tree. The tree is deep. Is there an easy way to do that? I will probably have to do this many times…
William Jockusch
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35
votes
3 answers

undo Linux's rm?

Possible Duplicate: UNDO LINUX Trash Command Hi, Is there any simple way to undo an rm command? The question is purely theoretical; I have NEVER deleted the log of a benchmark queue who took a whole lunchtime to run.
Adam Matan
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28
votes
11 answers

Prevent user typing accidental space between rm and wildcard

Intention: rm -rf string* Problem: rm -rf string * The first case is a legitimate and common use of rm, a small typo can cause a lot of problems in the second case. Is there a simple way to smartly protect against an accidental trailing or leading…
bobdole
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