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Article Index
1. Name
2. Synopsis
3. Frequently used options
4. Examples

1. Name

rm [man page] - remove files or directories

2. Synopsis

rm [OPTION]... FILE...

3. Frequently used options

-i, --interactive
      prompt before any removal
-f, --force
      ignore nonexistent files, never prompt
-r, -R, --recursive
      remove directories and their contents recursively

4. Examples

Interactive remove is very useful option.

rm -i foo.bar

interactive rm option prompts before overwrite

rm -f ( force) option removes also files which are non-existent and never prompt.

rm -f foo.bar

rm force -f option

Even that rm command was not constructed to remove directories by default you can force rm to remove directory and all files in inside by -fr option combination. Be very careful with this command it can do lots of damage:

rm -fr dir/

rm - force remove files and directories

Sometimes you need to make rm command to do not accept any other options. Lets assume that we have a file called "-i" and we need to remove it. In this case we nee to use "--" options wich will instruct rm command to not accept any other options.

rm -- -i

Or we might need to remove filename which starts with meta character. In this case we need to escape this meta character with "\". For example to remove $rm file we issue command:

rm \$rm