How does one delete a directory filled with files and other subdirectory permanently, bypassing the trash, from the command line in OS X?
Solution 1
If you want to delete foo/bar
, the command you want is rm -r foo/bar
(assuming you are working in the directory that contains foo
). This will delete bar
and everything in it, but leave foo
and anything else in it alone.
rm -r
is clever enough not to recurse into ../
- otherwise every rm -r
would delete everything.
Solution 2
If you run:
rm -r
without passing it a directory/file argument, nothing will happen.
There is no difference between:
rm -r xyz
rm -R xyz
rm -r xyz/
etc.
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Jon
Updated on September 17, 2022Comments
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Jon almost 2 years
So my command line skills are a little rusty and I'm having trouble remembering the differences between the meanings of flags in different distro's os's. I also don't really remember all my technical lingo so manpages seem really unclear.
Basically I'm on Mac OS X and want to delete a directory along with all of its contents. What I'm mainly concerned about, I suppose, is that it'll delete literally ALL of the references within the directory, including ../ and ../
<everything else, including ../'s own ../>
and then just totally screw up my entire system.Which of these do I want to run?
$ rm -R dir-name/
or
$ rm -r
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HikeMike over 13 yearsJon, please click the checkmark next to one of the responses if they answer your question. This will mark your problem solved and reward the person answering.
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