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📋 NAME

rm — remove files or directories

🚀 Quick Reference

Use Case	Command	Description
Remove a single file	rm file.txt	Delete the specified file (prompts if unwritable)
Remove multiple files	rm file1.txt file2.txt	Delete multiple files
Force remove without prompt	rm -f file.txt	Ignore nonexistent files and never prompt
Recursively remove a directory	rm -rf dir/	Remove directory and all contents (⚠️ dangerous)
Interactive removal	rm -i *.txt	Prompt before each deletion
Remove empty directory	rm -d empty_dir/	Remove only if directory is empty
Remove file named -f	rm -- -f	Use -- to separate options from non‑option arguments

📖 SYNOPSIS

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

📝 DESCRIPTION

rm removes each given 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.

Any attempt to remove a file whose last file name component is . or .. is rejected without any prompting, as mandated by POSIX.

⚠️ Warning: If you use rm to remove a file, it is usually possible to recover the contents of that file. If you want more assurance that the contents are unrecoverable, consider using shred.

⚙️ OPTIONS

The program accepts the following options. Also see Common options.

• -d, --dir — Remove the listed directories if they are empty.
• -f, --force — Ignore nonexistent files and missing operands, and never prompt the user. Ignore any previous --interactive (-i) option.
• -i — Prompt whether to remove each file. If the response is not affirmative, the file is skipped. Ignore any previous --force (-f) option. Equivalent to --interactive=always.
• -I — Prompt once whether to proceed with the command, if more than three files are named or if a recursive removal is requested. Ignore any previous --force (-f) option. Equivalent to --interactive=once.
• --interactive [=WHEN] — Specify when to issue an interactive prompt. WHEN may be omitted, or one of:
  • never — Do not prompt at all.
  • once — Prompt once if more than three files are named or if a recursive removal is requested. Equivalent to -I.
  • always — Prompt for every file being removed. Equivalent to -i.
  --interactive with no WHEN is equivalent to --interactive=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. This option is useful when removing a build "chroot" hierarchy, which normally contains no valuable data. However, it is not uncommon to bind-mount /home into such a hierarchy, to make it easier to use one's start-up file. The catch is that it's easy to forget to unmount /home. Then, when you use rm -rf to remove your normally throw-away chroot, that command will remove everything under /home, too. Use the --one-file-system option, and it will warn about and skip directories on other file systems. Of course, this will not save your /home if it and your chroot happen to be on the same file system. See also --preserve-root=all to protect command line arguments themselves.
• --preserve-root [=all] — Fail upon any attempt to remove the root directory, /, when used with the --recursive option. This is the default behavior. See Treating / specially. When all is specified, reject any command line argument that is not on the same file system as its parent.
• --no-preserve-root — Do not treat / specially when removing recursively. This option is not recommended unless you really want to remove all the files on your computer. See Treating / specially.
• -r, -R, --recursive — Remove the listed directories and their contents recursively.
• -v, --verbose — Print the name of each file before removing it.

📚 EXAMPLES

One common question is how to remove files whose names begin with a -. GNU rm, like every program that uses the getopt function to parse its arguments, lets you use the -- option to indicate that all following arguments are non-options. To remove a file called -f in the current directory, you could type either:

rm -- -f

or:

rm ./-f

The Unix rm program's use of a single - for this purpose predates the development of the getopt standard syntax.

🔗 SEE ALSO

• shred — securely erase files
• mv — move (rename) files

🚪 EXIT STATUS

An exit status of zero indicates success, and a nonzero value indicates failure.

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📋 NAME 🚀 Quick Reference 📖 SYNOPSIS 📝 DESCRIPTION ⚙️ OPTIONS 📚 EXAMPLES 🔗 SEE ALSO 🚪 EXIT STATUS