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RM(1P) POSIX Programmer's Manual RM(1P)
PROLOG
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux implementation of this interface may differ (con-
sult the corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may not be implemented on
Linux.
NAME
rm - remove directory entries
SYNOPSIS
rm [-fiRr] file...
DESCRIPTION
The rm utility shall remove the directory entry specified by each file argument.
If either of the files dot or dot-dot are specified as the basename portion of an operand (that is, the final pathname
component), rm shall write a diagnostic message to standard error and do nothing more with such operands.
For each file the following steps shall be taken:
1. If the file does not exist:
a. If the -f option is not specified, rm shall write a diagnostic message to standard error.
b. Go on to any remaining files.
2. If file is of type directory, the following steps shall be taken:
a. If neither the -R option nor the -r option is specified, rm shall write a diagnostic message to standard error,
do nothing more with file, and go on to any remaining files.
b. If the -f option is not specified, and either the permissions of file do not permit writing and the standard
input is a terminal or the -i option is specified, rm shall write a prompt to standard error and read a line from
the standard input. If the response is not affirmative, rm shall do nothing more with the current file and go on
to any remaining files.
c. For each entry contained in file, other than dot or dot-dot, the four steps listed here (1 to 4) shall be taken
with the entry as if it were a file operand. The rm utility shall not traverse directories by following symbolic
links into other parts of the hierarchy, but shall remove the links themselves.
d. If the -i option is specified, rm shall write a prompt to standard error and read a line from the standard input.
If the response is not affirmative, rm shall do nothing more with the current file, and go on to any remaining
files.
3. If file is not of type directory, the -f option is not specified, and either the permissions of file do not permit
writing and the standard input is a terminal or the -i option is specified, rm shall write a prompt to the standard
error and read a line from the standard input. If the response is not affirmative, rm shall do nothing more with the
current file and go on to any remaining files.
4. If the current file is a directory, rm shall perform actions equivalent to the rmdir() function defined in the System
Interfaces volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 called with a pathname of the current file used as the path argument. If
the current file is not a directory, rm shall perform actions equivalent to the unlink() function defined in the Sys-
tem Interfaces volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 called with a pathname of the current file used as the path argument.
If this fails for any reason, rm shall write a diagnostic message to standard error, do nothing more with the current
file, and go on to any remaining files.
The rm utility shall be able to descend to arbitrary depths in a file hierarchy, and shall not fail due to path length
limitations (unless an operand specified by the user exceeds system limitations).
OPTIONS
The rm utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guide-
lines.
The following options shall be supported:
-f Do not prompt for confirmation. Do not write diagnostic messages or modify the exit status in the case of nonexis-
tent operands. Any previous occurrences of the -i option shall be ignored.
-i Prompt for confirmation as described previously. Any previous occurrences of the -f option shall be ignored.
-R Remove file hierarchies. See the DESCRIPTION.
-r Equivalent to -R.
OPERANDS
The following operand shall be supported:
file A pathname of a directory entry to be removed.
STDIN
The standard input shall be used to read an input line in response to each prompt specified in the STDOUT section. Other-
wise, the standard input shall not be used.
INPUT FILES
None.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of rm:
LANG Provide a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions
volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 8.2, Internationalization Variables for the precedence of international-
ization variables used to determine the values of locale categories.)
LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the other internationalization variables.
LC_COLLATE
Determine the locale for the behavior of ranges, equivalence classes, and multi-character collating elements used
in the extended regular expression defined for the yesexpr locale keyword in the LC_MESSAGES category.
LC_CTYPE
Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-
byte as opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments) and the behavior of character classes within regular
expressions used in the extended regular expression defined for the yesexpr locale keyword in the LC_MESSAGES cat-
egory.
LC_MESSAGES
Determine the locale for the processing of affirmative responses that should be used to affect the format and con-
tents of diagnostic messages written to standard error.
NLSPATH
Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing of LC_MESSAGES .
ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
Default.
STDOUT
Not used.
STDERR
Prompts shall be written to standard error under the conditions specified in the DESCRIPTION and OPTIONS sections. The
prompts shall contain the file pathname, but their format is otherwise unspecified. The standard error also shall be used
for diagnostic messages.
OUTPUT FILES
None.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
None.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values shall be returned:
0 All of the named directory entries for which rm performed actions equivalent to the rmdir() or unlink() functions
were removed.
>0 An error occurred.
CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
Default.
The following sections are informative.
APPLICATION USAGE
The rm utility is forbidden to remove the names dot and dot-dot in order to avoid the consequences of inadvertently doing
something like:
rm -r .*
Some implementations do not permit the removal of the last link to an executable binary file that is being executed; see
the [EBUSY] error in the unlink() function defined in the System Interfaces volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001. Thus, the rm
utility can fail to remove such files.
The -i option causes rm to prompt and read the standard input even if the standard input is not a terminal, but in the
absence of -i the mode prompting is not done when the standard input is not a terminal.
EXAMPLES
1. The following command:
rm a.out core
removes the directory entries: a.out and core.
2. The following command:
rm -Rf junk
removes the directory junk and all its contents, without prompting.
RATIONALE
For absolute clarity, paragraphs (2b) and (3) in the DESCRIPTION of rm describing the behavior when prompting for confir-
mation, should be interpreted in the following manner:
if ((NOT f_option) AND
((not_writable AND input_is_terminal) OR i_option))
The exact format of the interactive prompts is unspecified. Only the general nature of the contents of prompts are speci-
fied because implementations may desire more descriptive prompts than those used on historical implementations. There-
fore, an application not using the -f option, or using the -i option, relies on the system to provide the most suitable
dialog directly with the user, based on the behavior specified.
The -r option is historical practice on all known systems. The synonym -R option is provided for consistency with the
other utilities in this volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 that provide options requesting recursive descent through the file
hierarchy.
The behavior of the -f option in historical versions of rm is inconsistent. In general, along with "forcing" the unlink
without prompting for permission, it always causes diagnostic messages to be suppressed and the exit status to be unmodi-
fied for nonexistent operands and files that cannot be unlinked. In some versions, however, the -f option suppresses
usage messages and system errors as well. Suppressing such messages is not a service to either shell scripts or users.
It is less clear that error messages regarding files that cannot be unlinked (removed) should be suppressed. Although
this is historical practice, this volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 does not permit the -f option to suppress such messages.
When given the -r and -i options, historical versions of rm prompt the user twice for each directory, once before remov-
ing its contents and once before actually attempting to delete the directory entry that names it. This allows the user to
"prune" the file hierarchy walk. Historical versions of rm were inconsistent in that some did not do the former prompt
for directories named on the command line and others had obscure prompting behavior when the -i option was specified and
the permissions of the file did not permit writing. The POSIX Shell and Utilities rm differs little from historic prac-
tice, but does require that prompts be consistent. Historical versions of rm were also inconsistent in that prompts were
done to both standard output and standard error. This volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 requires that prompts be done to
standard error, for consistency with cp and mv, and to allow historical extensions to rm that provide an option to list
deleted files on standard output.
The rm utility is required to descend to arbitrary depths so that any file hierarchy may be deleted. This means, for
example, that the rm utility cannot run out of file descriptors during its descent (that is, if the number of file
descriptors is limited, rm cannot be implemented in the historical fashion where one file descriptor is used per direc-
tory level). Also, rm is not permitted to fail because of path length restrictions, unless an operand specified by the
user is longer than {PATH_MAX}.
The rm utility removes symbolic links themselves, not the files they refer to, as a consequence of the dependence on the
unlink() functionality, per the DESCRIPTION. When removing hierarchies with -r or -R, the prohibition on following sym-
bolic links has to be made explicit.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.
SEE ALSO
rmdir(), the System Interfaces volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, remove(), rmdir(), unlink()
COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2003 Edition, Standard for
Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6, Copy-
right (C) 2001-2003 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any
discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group
Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online at http://www.open-
group.org/unix/online.html .
IEEE/The Open Group 2003 RM(1P)
