I was recently asked what is the difference between rm
and rm -rf
and I thought that it would be nice to share the answer with here as well.
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If you only run rm
it would only delete the named files and not directories. A rundown of the -rf
arguments:
-r
, -R
, --recursive
- is used to recursively delete the content of a directory, including hidden files and subdirectories.
-f
, --force
- Attempt to remove the files without prompting for confirmation, regardless of the file’s permissions.
Here’s an example of what would happen if you only run rm
and try to delete a directory:
rm dir1
The output that you would get is:
rm: dir1: is a directory
So to delete a folder you would just need to add the -r
argument:
rm -r dir1
Regarding the -f
argument, sometimes when deleting a file you would be asked for permissions, it would look something like this:
rm -f file1
Output:
rm: remove regular empty file 'file1'? yes
It is fine for a single file and it would prevent you from accidentally deleting a file, but if you are deleting hundreds of files, having to type yes for every single one could take ages. So to force the process just use the -f
argument.
Hope that this helps! Regards, Bobby