1.\"- 2.\" Copyright (c) 1990, 1993, 1994 3.\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. 4.\" 5.\" This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by 6.\" the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. 7.\" 8.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 9.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions 10.\" are met: 11.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright 12.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 13.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 14.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the 15.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 16.\" 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors 17.\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software 18.\" without specific prior written permission. 19.\" 20.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND 21.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE 22.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE 23.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE 24.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL 25.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS 26.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) 27.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT 28.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY 29.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF 30.\" SUCH DAMAGE. 31.\" 32.\" @(#)rm.1 8.5 (Berkeley) 12/5/94 33.\" $FreeBSD$ 34.\" 35.Dd April 25, 2013 36.Dt RM 1 37.Os 38.Sh NAME 39.Nm rm , 40.Nm unlink 41.Nd remove directory entries 42.Sh SYNOPSIS 43.Nm 44.Op Fl f | i 45.Op Fl dIPRrvWx 46.Ar 47.Nm unlink 48.Ar file 49.Sh DESCRIPTION 50The 51.Nm 52utility attempts to remove the non-directory type files specified on the 53command line. 54If the permissions of the file do not permit writing, and the standard 55input device is a terminal, the user is prompted (on the standard error 56output) for confirmation. 57.Pp 58The options are as follows: 59.Bl -tag -width indent 60.It Fl d 61Attempt to remove directories as well as other types of files. 62.It Fl f 63Attempt to remove the files without prompting for confirmation, 64regardless of the file's permissions. 65If the file does not exist, do not display a diagnostic message or modify 66the exit status to reflect an error. 67The 68.Fl f 69option overrides any previous 70.Fl i 71options. 72.It Fl i 73Request confirmation before attempting to remove each file, regardless of 74the file's permissions, or whether or not the standard input device is a 75terminal. 76The 77.Fl i 78option overrides any previous 79.Fl f 80options. 81.It Fl I 82Request confirmation once if more than three files are being removed or if a 83directory is being recursively removed. 84This is a far less intrusive option than 85.Fl i 86yet provides almost the same level of protection against mistakes. 87.It Fl P 88Overwrite regular files before deleting them. 89Files are overwritten three times, first with the byte pattern 0xff, 90then 0x00, and then 0xff again, before they are deleted. 91Files with multiple links will not be overwritten nor deleted 92and a warning will be issued. 93If the 94.Fl f 95option is specified, files with multiple links will also be overwritten 96and deleted. 97No warning will be issued. 98.Pp 99Specifying this flag for a read only file will cause 100.Nm 101to generate an error message and exit. 102The file will not be removed or overwritten. 103.Pp 104N.B.: The 105.Fl P 106flag is not considered a security feature 107.Pq see Sx BUGS . 108.It Fl R 109Attempt to remove the file hierarchy rooted in each 110.Ar file 111argument. 112The 113.Fl R 114option implies the 115.Fl d 116option. 117If the 118.Fl i 119option is specified, the user is prompted for confirmation before 120each directory's contents are processed (as well as before the attempt 121is made to remove the directory). 122If the user does not respond affirmatively, the file hierarchy rooted in 123that directory is skipped. 124.Pp 125.It Fl r 126Equivalent to 127.Fl R . 128.It Fl v 129Be verbose when deleting files, showing them as they are removed. 130.It Fl W 131Attempt to undelete the named files. 132Currently, this option can only be used to recover 133files covered by whiteouts in a union file system (see 134.Xr undelete 2 ) . 135.It Fl x 136When removing a hierarchy, do not cross mount points. 137.El 138.Pp 139The 140.Nm 141utility removes symbolic links, not the files referenced by the links. 142.Pp 143It is an error to attempt to remove the files 144.Pa / , 145.Pa .\& 146or 147.Pa .. . 148.Pp 149When the utility is called as 150.Nm unlink , 151only one argument, 152which must not be a directory, 153may be supplied. 154No options may be supplied in this simple mode of operation, 155which performs an 156.Xr unlink 2 157operation on the passed argument. 158.Sh EXIT STATUS 159The 160.Nm 161utility exits 0 if all of the named files or file hierarchies were removed, 162or if the 163.Fl f 164option was specified and all of the existing files or file hierarchies were 165removed. 166If an error occurs, 167.Nm 168exits with a value >0. 169.Sh NOTES 170The 171.Nm 172command uses 173.Xr getopt 3 174to parse its arguments, which allows it to accept 175the 176.Sq Li -- 177option which will cause it to stop processing flag options at that 178point. 179This will allow the removal of file names that begin 180with a dash 181.Pq Sq - . 182For example: 183.Pp 184.Dl "rm -- -filename" 185.Pp 186The same behavior can be obtained by using an absolute or relative 187path reference. 188For example: 189.Pp 190.Dl "rm /home/user/-filename" 191.Dl "rm ./-filename" 192.Pp 193When 194.Fl P 195is specified with 196.Fl f 197the file will be overwritten and removed even if it has hard links. 198.Sh EXAMPLES 199Recursively remove all files contained within the 200.Pa foobar 201directory hierarchy: 202.Pp 203.Dl $ rm -rf foobar 204.Pp 205Either of these commands will remove the file 206.Pa -f : 207.Bd -literal -offset indent 208$ rm -- -f 209$ rm ./-f 210.Ed 211.Sh COMPATIBILITY 212The 213.Nm 214utility differs from historical implementations in that the 215.Fl f 216option only masks attempts to remove non-existent files instead of 217masking a large variety of errors. 218The 219.Fl v 220option is non-standard and its use in scripts is not recommended. 221.Pp 222Also, historical 223.Bx 224implementations prompted on the standard output, 225not the standard error output. 226.Sh SEE ALSO 227.Xr chflags 1 , 228.Xr rmdir 1 , 229.Xr undelete 2 , 230.Xr unlink 2 , 231.Xr fts 3 , 232.Xr getopt 3 , 233.Xr symlink 7 234.Sh STANDARDS 235The 236.Nm 237command conforms to 238.St -p1003.2 . 239.Pp 240The simplified 241.Nm unlink 242command conforms to 243.St -susv2 . 244.Sh HISTORY 245A 246.Nm 247command appeared in 248.At v1 . 249.Sh BUGS 250The 251.Fl P 252option assumes that the underlying storage overwrites file blocks 253when data is written to an existing offset. 254Several factors including the file system and its backing store could defeat 255this assumption. 256This includes, but is not limited to file systems that use a 257Copy-On-Write strategy (e.g. ZFS or UFS when snapshots are being used), Flash 258media that are using a wear leveling algorithm, or when the backing datastore 259does journaling, etc. 260In addition, only regular files are overwritten, other types of files are not. 261