rm command to delete files in linux

rm command to delete files in linux

The rm command (short for remove) is a Unix / Linux command which is used to delete files from a file system.

Here is few example of rm command

1) To remove a file named test.txt, use the following command.

$ rm test.txt

Here rm test would delete the file named “test” in the current directory. You could also specify a full path to the file: rm /path/to/test would delete the file at /path/to/test on your file system.

2) You can also use the rm command to delete multiple files at one time like the following command.

$ rm file1 file2 file3

If you want to be careful when deleting files, you can use the -i option with the rm command. The ‘-I’ stands for “inquire”, so when you use this option the rm command prompts you with a yes/no prompt before actually deleting your files. For example:

$ rm -i files file2 file3

3) To remove all files & subdirectories from a directory, use the below given command.

$ rm -rf directoryname

4) To delete all TXT files in the current directory, use the following command.

$ rm *.txt

5) To delete all files in the current directory that begin with the string “index”, you can use the command given below.

$ rm index*

This command deletes files named index.php, index.html and in general, any filename that begins with the character string “index”.

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