this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2021
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for real though, modern linux distros will rarely require you to enter a command line, and if you do, a quick internet search can usually help you find out what you need to enter

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[–] sooper_dooper_roofer@hexbear.net 0 points 3 years ago (1 children)
[–] crime@hexbear.net 0 points 3 years ago (1 children)

rm is the unix command for remove — it deletes files and directories.

The -r flag, or --recursive recursively traverses all the directories in the path file that you specify (so like if you have a directory stuff/ which has files a.txt, b.pdf, and subdirectory c/ then rm -r stuff/ would remove both files as well as c/ and its contents.

The -f flag, or --force, does what it says on the tin: it deletes everything without prompting you or warning you about what it's going to delete.

So it's possible to delete all the files on your system — including ones that the operating system needs to run — with rm -rf /. It's very hard to do on accident these days — usually you need superuser permissions (the sudo in sudo rm -rf /) which requires you to enter your administrator password and to also pass the flag --no-preserve-root which was created to keep people from deleting their whole system because someone named pigpoopballs69 on a random forum said to run sudo rm -rf /

[–] sooper_dooper_roofer@hexbear.net 0 points 3 years ago (1 children)

The -r flag, or --recursive recursively traverses all the directories in the path file that you specify (so like if you have a directory stuff/ which has files a.txt, b.pdf, and subdirectory c/ then rm -r stuff/ would remove both files as well as c/ and its contents.

So what would happen if you just did "rm stuff/" without the recursive flag? Shouldn't it work the same way and delete all of stuff/ contents?

also how do you do that code font thingy

[–] crime@hexbear.net 1 points 3 years ago

rm stuff/ without the recursive flag fails with an error (rm: cannot remove 'stuff': Is a directory) and doesn't remove anything. I'd guess the decision there was to have the least-destructive end result for ambiguous behavior, but I'm not entirely sure what the history is there, pretty sure that command is older than I am :)

The code font thingy is the back tick character: `