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RM(1) General Commands Manual RM(1)

rm — remove directory entries

rm [-f | -i] [-dPRrW] file ...

The rm utility attempts to remove the non-directory type files specified on the command line. If the permissions of the file do not permit writing, and the standard input device is a terminal, the user is prompted (on the standard error output) for confirmation.

The options are as follows:

Attempt to remove directories as well as other types of files.
Attempt to remove the files without prompting for confirmation, regardless of the file's permissions. If the file does not exist, do not display a diagnostic message or modify the exit status to reflect an error. The -f option overrides any previous -i options.
Request confirmation before attempting to remove each file, regardless of the file's permissions, or whether or not the standard input device is a terminal. The -i option overrides any previous -f options.
Overwrite regular files before deleting them. Files are overwritten three times, first with the byte pattern 0xff, then 0x00, and then 0xff again, before they are deleted.
Attempt to remove the file hierarchy rooted in each file argument. The -R option implies the -d option. If the -i option is specified, the user is prompted for confirmation before each directory's contents are processed (as well as before the attempt is made to remove the directory). If the user does not respond affirmatively, the file hierarchy rooted in that directory is skipped.
Equivalent to -R.
Attempts to undelete the named files. Currently, this option can only be used to recover files covered by whiteouts.

The rm utility removes symbolic links, not the files referenced by the links.

It is an error to attempt to remove the files ``.'' and ``..''.

The rm utility exits 0 if all of the named files or file hierarchies were removed, or if the -f option was specified and all of the existing files or file hierarchies were removed. If an error occurs, rm exits with a value >0.

rmdir(1), undelete(2), unlink(2), fts(3), symlink(7)

The -P option assumes that the underlying file system is a fixed-block file system. UFS is a fixed-block file system, LFS is not. In addition, only regular files are overwritten, other types of files are not.

The rm utility differs from historical implementations in that the -f option only masks attempts to remove non-existent files instead of masking a large variety of errors.

Also, historical BSD implementations prompted on the standard output, not the standard error output.

The rm command is expected to be IEEE Std 1003.2 (“POSIX.2”) compatible.

4.4BSD-Lite2 December 5, 1994 RM(1)