Removing non-empty directories

brunnopessoa · 11-09-2003, 10:20 AM

Hello all!

I'm totally newbie in Linux world and have just installed Red Hat 9 in my machine. I am very excited to learn much more about this OS. I and some co-workers are supposed to install Linux in a machine we have in our company's marketing departament for file sharing purposes. I heard we must use Samba, since we will have clients running on Windows, right?!

First I am beginning with the Bash stuff, and I hope I can learn about C programming in Linux evironment too. I enjoy C and Java programmings.

Well... could you help me with my first doubt? I tried to delete a directory using rmdir <name of the directory>, but an error was displayed saying the dir is not empty. How can I delete a directory, even if it is not empty and either have sub-directories?

Thanks a lot!

Brunno

elp · 11-09-2003, 10:22 AM

rm -rf

brunnopessoa · 11-09-2003, 10:30 AM

thanks a lot! it does work! =) ...but what are these options?

r goes recursively, it's fine. but i did not understande the force(f) option.

hw-tph · 11-09-2003, 11:21 AM

The -f(orce) option tells rm not to ask you for each file you want to delete. If you just use rm -r dirname you'll get prompted for each and every file in the directory and its subdirectories. Something really annoying, like this:

Code:

hw@baron:~/build$ rm -r wmpower-0.1.3/
rm: descend into directory `wmpower-0.1.3/'? y
rm: remove regular file `wmpower-0.1.3//Makefile'? y
rm: remove regular file `wmpower-0.1.3//LEGGIMI'? y
rm: remove regular file `wmpower-0.1.3//README'? y
rm: remove regular file `wmpower-0.1.3//fdl.txt'? y

etc, etc, etc, ad nauseum :P

Håkan

brunnopessoa · 11-09-2003, 11:54 AM

clear, hw-tph, tks!

i am reading something about hardlinks to inodes and symlinks to file names. If I delete all hardlinks to an inode, this inode itselt is deleted automatically? is that the way it works?

trickykid · 11-09-2003, 11:59 AM

On a side note, when using rm -rf , you are telling your system to remove files without asking for a confirmation.

Example if you were root and did this:

rm -rf / home/user/blah.blah

Notice the space after / and home, if that was an accident, it would delete your whole system.

Just a thought and a note to be careful when using this command.

brunnopessoa · 11-09-2003, 12:09 PM

Oh gosh! really dangerous! trickykid, tks for your advice!

But if I am deleting the file itselt (you meant the inode?), so the links I have for this inode will be all broken?

Laptop2250 · 11-11-2003, 10:51 AM

haha!! thank you for your newbie question!! i searched found this thread and deleted a stupid folder i couldnt delete!! =) damn folder was annoying me!!

r_jensen11 · 11-13-2003, 07:56 PM

you could also log in as root if it's for removing programs that you installed outside of the user's directory(Like Mozilla and the like...)