Questions tagged [rm]

Questions relating to the Linux remove command (rm)

287 questions
939
votes
10 answers

How can I recursively delete all files of a specific extension in the current directory?

How do I safely delete all files with a specific extension (e.g. .bak ) from current directory and all subfolders using one command-line? Simply, I'm afraid to use rm since I used it wrong once and now I need advice.
user216038
  • 9,393
483
votes
9 answers

How to remove all files from a directory?

The closest I've gotten is # rm /path/to/directory/*.* but that doesn't work for files that don't have an extension...
user784637
  • 11,475
133
votes
2 answers

Removing files older than 7 days

I write below command to delete all files that are older than 7 days, but it doesn't work: find /media/bkfolder/ -mtime +7 -name'*.gz' -exec rm {} \; How can I remove these files?
Malihe Pakyari
  • 1,331
113
votes
6 answers

How do I remove a folder?

I am a new user and I am trying to remove a specific folder. I am using sudo rm /path/ , but it is not working. What is the correct command to use? It is a file catolog I am attempting to remove but I am geting a message that it is empty.
Carl
  • 1,131
96
votes
8 answers

Can files/directories deleted with rm be restored?

Is it possible to restore files/directories which are deleted from terminal using rm and rm -r ?. If a file is deleted from graphical interface, it could be restored from trash, but how do you restore a file if it is removed using the rm utility?.
user3215
  • 5,495
93
votes
6 answers

How is 'rm -rf /' able to delete all files in the system?

I haven't tried this command on Ubuntu (for obvious reasons) so I am not sure if Ubuntu will allow its execution. But it's famous for deleting everything. Just out of curiosity, what happens when the kernel and /bin are deleted? How does rm maintain…
Muye
  • 1,033
82
votes
13 answers

How to remove all files and subdirectories in a directory WITHOUT deleting the directory in bash?

Is there a command to remove all files and subdirectories in a directory without deleting the directory? For example if I have directory dontDeleteMe with subdirectories 1 , 2 , 3 and each subdirectory has a few pictures in it, how can I remove the…
user784637
  • 11,475
52
votes
7 answers

Is there any faster way to remove a directory than "rm -rf"?

I have a folder that has many files and "rm -rf" takes a lot of time to complete. Is there any faster way to remove a directory and it's contents (subdirs, etc)?
Mohammad Moghimi
  • 2,211
47
votes
7 answers

"No such file or directory" when trying to remove a file, but the file exists?

I am trying to remove a png image that was uploaded to my server via a PHP script. Whenever I try to delete it both through ftp and terminal, I get the error No such file or directory However, when I ls in the dir, the file is listed and it is also…
DevinFrench
  • 581
46
votes
2 answers

Does using -v (verbose) slow commands down?

In this question: How to remove all files and subdirectories in a directory WITHOUT deleting the directory in bash? it is asked how to delete all file in a folder, and not the folder itself. Matt s exelent answer includes the use of the -v flag to…
Eiriks
  • 595
38
votes
5 answers

rm: cannot remove directory/: Permission denied

I made a directory called "shadi" and set this permission for it sinoosh@ubuntu:/home$ ls -ld shadi drwxr-xrwx 2 root root 4096 Jul 1 01:58 shadi In this situation I have "others" permissions, but why can I not delete it? sinoosh@ubuntu:/home$ rm -r…
Sinoosh
  • 2,101
35
votes
3 answers

Piping find -name to xargs results in filenames with spaces not being passed to the command

Normally to remove files with spaces in their filename you would have to run: $ rm "file name" but if I want to remove multiple files, e.g.: $ find . -name "*.txt" | xargs rm This will not delete files with spaces in them.
Ash
  • 497
35
votes
10 answers

Will ls always list the files that rm will remove?

Something I feel I ought to know for sure: if I ls <something> , will rm <something> remove exactly the same files that ls displayed? Are there any circumstances where rm could remove files that ls did not show? (This is in the 18.04 bash) Edit:…
B.Tanner
  • 2,685
32
votes
5 answers

Removing folder named ~

This is the output of ls -l ls -l total 53484 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2011-02-10 05:59 ~ -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 54313810 2011-02-13 05:09 jobs.jar -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 384035 2011-02-15 05:33 jobsLog.out I can't do rm -rf ~ because that will…
theTuxRacer
  • 16,543
30
votes
3 answers

What is the command to remove all files but not directories?

Let's say I have a directory tree like this: FOLDER: file1 file2 file3 Subfolder1: file1 file2 Subfolder2: file1 file2 If I used rm -r FOLDER/* , everything in FOLDER would be deleted including sub-directories. How can I delete all files in FOLDER…
PKM
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