[SOLVED] rm Dir

Huamin · 06-06-2012, 01:53 AM

Hi,
If I run this
rm -R directoryname/*

it will confirm to delete each file one by one. How to force it to delete all?

Many Thanks & Best Regards,
HuaMin

corbintechboy · 06-06-2012, 01:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Huamin

Hi,
If I run this
rm -R directoryname/*

it will confirm to delete each file one by one. How to force it to delete all?

Many Thanks & Best Regards,
HuaMin

rm -rf

TobiSGD · 06-06-2012, 02:05 AM

If you have to confirm the deletion (which is not the default behavior for rm) then most likely you have an alias in your shell's configuration file that adds the -i option for rm. If you use /usr/bin/rm instead of rm in your command the alias will not be used and you will not be asked for confirmation.

David the H. · 06-06-2012, 11:29 AM

There are several other ways to bypass aliases as well:

How to ignore aliases or functions when running a command?
http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/086

And read the rm man page for details on the options available to you. Using -I in your alias will have it prompt you only once when deleting multiple files, for example.

Note also that, for the majority of tools, when you give multiple conflicting options the last one supplied generally takes precedence. So you can probably just add -f to your command to override the -i supplied by the alias.