RM(1) User Commands RM(1)

rm — remove directory entries

/usr/bin/rm [-dfiv] target ...

/usr/bin/rm -rR [-dfiv] target ...


/usr/xpg4/bin/rm [-fiRr] target ...

The rm utility removes the directory entry specified by each target argument. If a file has no write permission and the standard input is a terminal, the full set of permissions (in octal) for the file are printed followed by a question mark. This is a prompt for confirmation. If the answer is affirmative, the file is deleted, otherwise the file remains. If standard input is not a terminal, then the file is removed regardless.

If target is a symbolic link, the link is removed, but the file or directory to which it refers is not deleted. Users do not need write permission to remove a symbolic link, provided they have write permissions in the directory.

If target is a directory, then it is not removed by default. There are two exceptions here. If the -r or -R option is specified, then directories will be recursively descended into and removed. If -d is specified and the directory is empty, then the directory will be removed.

If multiple targets are specified and removal of a target fails for any reason, rm writes a diagnostic message to standard error, do nothing more to the current target, and go on to any remaining targets.

If the standard input is not a terminal, the utility operates as if the -f option is in effect.

The following options are supported for both /usr/bin/rm and /usr/xpg4/bin/rm:

Allow empty directories to be removed.
Recursively removes directories and subdirectories in the argument list. The directory is emptied of files and removed. The user is normally prompted for removal of any write-protected files which the directory contains. The write-protected files are removed without prompting, however, if the -f option is used, or if the standard input is not a terminal and the -i option is not used.

Symbolic links that are encountered with this option is not traversed.

If the removal of a non-empty, write-protected directory is attempted, the utility always fails (even if the -f option is used), resulting in an error message.

Same as -r option.
Print the path of each file or directory successfully removed to standard output.

The following options are supported for /usr/bin/rm only:

Removes all files (whether write-protected or not) in a directory without prompting the user. In a write-protected directory, however, files are never removed (whatever their permissions are), but no messages are displayed. If the removal of a write-protected directory is attempted, this option does not suppress an error message.
Interactive. With this option, rm prompts for confirmation before removing any files. It overrides the -f option and remains in effect even if the standard input is not a terminal.

The following options are supported for /usr/xpg4/bin/rm only:

Does not prompt for confirmation. Does not write diagnostic messages or modify the exit status in the case of non-existent operands. Any previous occurrences of the -i option is ignored.
Prompts for confirmation. Any occurrences of the -f option is ignored.

The following operands are supported:

target
Specifies the pathname of a directory entry to be removed. This may be a file of any kind or a directory.

See largefile(7) for the description of the behavior of rm when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte (2^31 bytes).

The following exit values are returned:

If the -f option was not specified, all the named directory entries were removed; otherwise, all the existing named directory entries were removed.
An error occurred.

Example 1 Removing Files

The following command removes the directory entries a.out and core:

example% rm a.out core

Example 2 Removing a Directory without Prompting

The following command removes the directory junk and all its contents, without prompting:

example% rm -rf junk

Example 3 Removing Empty Directories

The following command removes an empty directory.

example% mkdir foo
example% rm -d foo

Example 4 Printing Removed Contents

The following command prints the names of all files successfully removed to standard out.

example% rm -rv out/ test
out/amd64/dtrace
out/amd64
out
test

All messages are generally self-explanatory.

It is forbidden to remove the files "." and ".." in order to avoid the consequences of inadvertently doing something like the following:

example% rm -r .*

It is forbidden to remove the file "/" in order to avoid the consequences of inadvertently doing something like:

example% rm -rf $x/$y

or

example% rm -rf /$y

when $x and $y expand to empty strings.

See environ(7) for descriptions of the following environment variables that affect the execution of rm: LANG, LC_ALL, LC_COLLATE, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH.

Affirmative responses are processed using the extended regular expression defined for the yesexpr keyword in the LC_MESSAGES category of the user's locale. The locale specified in the LC_COLLATE category defines the behavior of ranges, equivalence classes, and multi-character collating elements used in the expression defined for yesexpr. The locale specified in LC_CTYPE determines the locale for interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data a characters, the behavior of character classes used in the expression defined for the yesexpr. See locale(7).

Committed

The ksh93 built-in binding to /bin and /usr/bin is Volatile. The built-in interfaces are Uncommitted.

ksh93(1), rmdir(1), unlink(2), attributes(7), environ(7), largefile(7), standards(7)

A - permits the user to mark explicitly the end of any command line options, allowing rm to recognize file arguments that begin with a -. As an aid to BSD migration, rm accepts -- as a synonym for -. This migration aid may disappear in a future release. If a -- and a - both appear on the same command line, the second is interpreted as a file.

March 28, 2026 OmniOS