Can't remove or change a directory

Tony Nelson tonynelson at georgeanelson.com
Fri Nov 16 15:47:35 UTC 2007


At 8:13 AM -0600 11/16/07, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:

>Tony Nelson wrote:
>> At 1:22 PM -0600 11/15/07, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
>>  ...
>>> ...Did you know that
>>> to remove a directory, you should use rmdir, and not rm? There is
>>> also "rm -d <directory>", but that is limited to root, and should be
>>> used with care.
>>
>> What is the benefit of using rmdir rather than rm -rf, other than having to
>> empty the directory first?  (I use two steps, ll dir followed by editing
>> the command to be rm -rf.)
>>
>Safety - you are less likely to remove things you did not mean to.
>Just as your test makes sure you are deleting only what you want,
>using rmdir makes sure you are removing an empty directory.

OK.  The directories I remove normally have files in them, so it doesn't
really apply to my use.


>> I don't see any -d option to rm in man rm, info rm, or rm --help (all tests
>> done as root!).
>>From "man rm" on FC6 (It looks like the later versions do not have it.):
>
>-d, --directory
>    unlink FILE, even if it is a non-empty directory (super-user
>    only; this  works only if your system supports 'unlink' for
>    nonempty directories)

OK, it's just not in the F7 docs.
-- 
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