what is a nonexistent file?

[jackthe7th]

While reviewing the rm command in the man pages, it specifies that the argument -f will ignore nonexistent files. My question is, what is a nonexistent file, and more specifically, how does it differ from a "file"?

I cannot seem to find a clear answer about this.

[GNU-Fan]

Let's say you have to clean up a directory of files on a regular basis.
The files do always have the same names.

Soon you will grow tired of manually deleting them, so you write a script like
rm oddfile1
rm oddfile2
...

Now if it happens that one of these files that are supposed to be deleted is not there,you would get a warning message: This file I am supposed to delete does not exist.

The option in question suppresses such messages.

[jackthe7th]

thankyou, I misunderstood and thought that a nonexistent file was a specific type, much like a hidden file.

Seems silly now