How to remove a directory with files in it.
 

Trying to delete a directory with files in and I don't want to be prompted for a yes answer.

"rm -rf directory" should do it.

be careful: very dangerous command!!!

A tip to keep in mind when deleting files would be the structure of directories and how they are referenced. For instance, if you are in "/foo" and inside that directory, there is another named "bar" you would run:

rm -Rf ./bar

From foo. The ./ just makes sure you are deleting from your working directory. If at any point, you need to know where you are, run `pwd` to print your working directory.

There are countless times that I ahve seen people mistakenly delete /etc because there was an etc dir inside their current working directory and they typed 'rm -Rf /etc' instead of 'rm -Rf ./etc' or 'rm -Rf etc'.

In short: Be careful. Its hard to un-do that type of mistake. Especially on ext3 :).


Michael Piekarski
Network Engineer
mpiekarski@hostmysite.com
www.hostmysite.com

Damn...I just use the trash can...what's the difference?

Is there a difference between that and the trash can and delete?

Yeah, if you dump it in the trash can, it can easily be recovered as long as you don't clean the trash. An rm -rf deletes things permanently.

For safety, you may want to use rm -rfi. Unlike plain -rf, it will prompt for confirmation. Always place the i option last!

The trash can is just another folder. When you send something to the can you are moving it, not deleting it.

One safe way is :

you can create a fn for this an put it in your .bash_profile

Thanks
 

Thank you all so much! Great info.