rm is the 'remove' command.
27
votes
7answers
3k views
How do I delete a file whose name begins with “-” (hyphen a.k.a. dash or minus)?
How do you remove a file whose filename begins with a dash (hyphen or minus) -? I'm ssh'd into a remote OSX server and I have this file in my directory:
tohru:~ $ ls -l
total 8
-rw-r--r-- 1 me ...
10
votes
3answers
2k views
Make `rm` move to trash
Is there a Linux script / application which, instead of deleting files, moves them to a special “trash” location? I’d like this as a replacement for rm (maybe even aliasing the latter; there are pros ...
25
votes
2answers
4k views
Why can rm remove read-only files?
If I create a file and then change its permissions to 444 (read-only), how come rm can remove it?
If I do this:
echo test > test.txt
chmod 444 test.txt
rm test.txt
...rm will ask if I want to ...
14
votes
5answers
12k views
Where do files go when the rm command is issued?
Recently I accidentally did rm on a set of files and it got me thinking where exactly these files end up?
That is to say, when working with a GUI, deleted files go to the Trash. What's the equivalent ...
8
votes
2answers
2k views
How to remove all empty directories in a subtree?
How can I remove all empty directories in a subtree? I used something like
find . -type d -exec rmdir {} 2>/dev/null \;
but I needs to be run multiple times in order to remove directories ...
3
votes
1answer
1k views
Cannot delete a file - permission denied - why?
[db2inst1][testing ~/sqllib/db2dump] rm db2diag.log
rm: cannot remove `db2diag.log': Permission denied
[db2inst1][testing ~/sqllib/db2dump] id
uid=1002(db2inst1) gid=107(db2iadm1) ...
9
votes
7answers
1k views
What's the best way to format a HDD in Linux in order to leave no trace?
I'm running Debian and need a way to format the entire hdd in order to not leave any trace on it because I want to donate it to a friend. So what will be the best way in order to format it? If I ...
18
votes
9answers
2k views
How can I delete a file with no name
I somehow managed to create a file that doesn't seem to have a filename. I found some information regarding how to get more details of the file in the following thread.
However, I tried some of the ...
9
votes
6answers
3k views
Deleting all files in a folder except files X, Y, and Z
I have a lot of files and folders in a specific folder and I want to delete all of them; however, I wanted to keep files X, Y, and Z.
Is there a way I can do something like: rm * | but NOT grep | X ...
3
votes
1answer
343 views
Deleting files by age
Is there a command to delete all the files in a directory that haven't been modified in N days? I need to clean up some old logs.
10
votes
4answers
5k views
How do I recursively shred an entire directory tree?
I have a directory tree that I would like to shred with the Linux 'shred' utility. Unfortunately, shred has no -R option for recursive shredding.
How can I shred an entire directory tree ...
5
votes
4answers
345 views
How to forbid the execution of /bin/rm -f *?
I cannot remember how many times I've listed a subdirectory and executed /bin/rm -f * in the current directory. Can anyone give suggestions to help me avoid this? What should I do if I want the system ...
1
vote
2answers
4k views
Delete files in a directory that match a regexp, using a Mac terminal
How do I delete files in a directory that match a given regexp, or a similar solution, using a Mac terminal?
10
votes
1answer
1k views
What does *~ mean?
At the end of a makefile I saw
rm -f *~ *.class
I understand the *.class, but what's *~?
5
votes
1answer
2k views
Unable to delete file, even when running as root
I am in the process of migrating a machine from RHEL 4 to 5. Rather than actually do an upgrade we have created a new VM (both machines are in a cloud) and I am in the process of copying across data ...
4
votes
1answer
944 views
deleting a 'file' under /proc or /dev
I am using a cowdancer/debootstrap setup to generate a chroot.
Of course, as I iterate, I generate some chroot configurations that are bad.
I have found myself in an awkward situation where I have ...
4
votes
5answers
346 views
How do I remove a file I accidentally created named $file?
I was working on a shell script and I accidentally created a file with the variable as its name. Now I have $file in my ls output, and cannot remove it. What can I do?
3
votes
0answers
70 views
Move files and delete directories with rsync?
Recently I needed to delete a large number of files (over 1 million) and I read that doing:
rsync -av --delete `mktemp -d`/ ~/source && rmdir ~/source
Was one of the most optimized ways to ...
3
votes
2answers
230 views
Capturing new output after deleting the output file
I'm runnig a java server on Debian with this command:
java -jar myapp.jar [args] >> log.txt
Once I gzipped the log file to send it and then I realized the original file was gone, leaving me ...
2
votes
2answers
1k views
undo rm -r, restore data
I was playing around with zip and accidentally deleted my /home/ folder (i wanted to delete home/ which got created by unzipping an archive).
I used rm -r /home/instead of rm -r home/ as root...
Is ...
0
votes
4answers
246 views
Configure rm command
I want to configure rm command. When one types rm to delete a file, then instead of deleting it right away, the file has to be transferred to the .trash of home folder. Can someone help me ?
