remove recursively

[jackthe7th]

the rm command man pages discusses removing files or directories recursively.

So what is meant by deleting a file or directory recursively? and what are some reasons for doing so?

[rcgreen]

It means removing a directory, and everything in it.

[hrasdt]

If you want to delete a directory/folder, you have to use -r. If the directory is empty, you can also use rmdir

[bknorr]

As a general rule, anytime I am using rm -r, I will specify the entire path of the folder I wanted deleted recursively.

For instance, if I want to delete the contents of directory lame-program from /opt/software/lame-program, I'll do

/opt/software/lame-program# rm -r /opt/software/lame-program/*

instead of

/opt/software/lame-program# rm -r ./*

Once, during a down-time window at work in the middle of the night, I meant to run the command as shown in the 2nd example, but forgot a pretty important part:

/opt/software/lame-program# rm -r /*

. The missing dot means your root partition is going to get deleted recursively. It isn't a fun place to be in. After that experience, I always go non-lazy when rm -r is involved.