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 October 31, 2010 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 dIPRrvW 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.El 136.Pp 137The 138.Nm 139utility removes symbolic links, not the files referenced by the links. 140.Pp 141It is an error to attempt to remove the files 142.Pa / , 143.Pa .\& 144or 145.Pa .. . 146.Pp 147When the utility is called as 148.Nm unlink , 149only one argument, 150which must not be a directory, 151may be supplied. 152No options may be supplied in this simple mode of operation, 153which performs an 154.Xr unlink 2 155operation on the passed argument. 156.Sh EXIT STATUS 157The 158.Nm 159utility exits 0 if all of the named files or file hierarchies were removed, 160or if the 161.Fl f 162option was specified and all of the existing files or file hierarchies were 163removed. 164If an error occurs, 165.Nm 166exits with a value >0. 167.Sh NOTES 168The 169.Nm 170command uses 171.Xr getopt 3 172to parse its arguments, which allows it to accept 173the 174.Sq Li -- 175option which will cause it to stop processing flag options at that 176point. 177This will allow the removal of file names that begin 178with a dash 179.Pq Sq - . 180For example: 181.Pp 182.Dl "rm -- -filename" 183.Pp 184The same behavior can be obtained by using an absolute or relative 185path reference. 186For example: 187.Pp 188.Dl "rm /home/user/-filename" 189.Dl "rm ./-filename" 190.Pp 191When 192.Fl P 193is specified with 194.Fl f 195the file will be overwritten and removed even if it has hard links. 196.Sh COMPATIBILITY 197The 198.Nm 199utility differs from historical implementations in that the 200.Fl f 201option only masks attempts to remove non-existent files instead of 202masking a large variety of errors. 203The 204.Fl v 205option is non-standard and its use in scripts is not recommended. 206.Pp 207Also, historical 208.Bx 209implementations prompted on the standard output, 210not the standard error output. 211.Sh SEE ALSO 212.Xr chflags 1 , 213.Xr rmdir 1 , 214.Xr undelete 2 , 215.Xr unlink 2 , 216.Xr fts 3 , 217.Xr getopt 3 , 218.Xr symlink 7 219.Sh STANDARDS 220The 221.Nm 222command conforms to 223.St -p1003.2 . 224.Pp 225The simplified 226.Nm unlink 227command conforms to 228.St -susv2 . 229.Sh HISTORY 230A 231.Nm 232command appeared in 233.At v1 . 234.Sh BUGS 235The 236.Fl P 237option assumes that the underlying storage overwrites file blocks 238when data is written to an existing offset. 239Several factors including the file system and its backing store could defeat 240this assumption. 241This includes, but is not limited to file systems that use a 242Copy-On-Write strategy (e.g. ZFS or UFS when snapshots are being used), Flash 243media that are using a wear leveling algorithm, or when the backing datastore 244does journaling, etc. 245In addition, only regular files are overwritten, other types of files are not. 246