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RM(1) General Commands Manual RM(1) NAME rm, rmdir - remove (unlink) files SYNOPSIS rm [ -fri ] file ... rmdir dir ... DESCRIPTION Rm removes the entries for one or more files from a directory. If an entry was the last link to the file, the file is destroyed. Removal of a file requires write permission in its directory, but neither read nor write permission on the file itself. If a file has no write permission and the standard input is a terminal, its permissions are printed and a line is read from the standard input. If that line begins with `y' the file is deleted, otherwise the file remains. No questions are asked when the -f (force) option is given. If a designated file is a directory, an error comment is printed unless the optional argument -r has been used. In that case, rm recursively deletes the entire contents of the specified directory, and the direc- tory itself. If the -i (interactive) option is in effect, rm asks whether to delete each file, and, under -r, whether to examine each directory. Rmdir removes entries for the named directories, which must be empty. SEE ALSO unlink(2) DIAGNOSTICS Generally self-explanatory. It is forbidden to remove the file `..' merely to avoid the antisocial consequences of inadvertently doing something like `rm -r .*'. RM(1)