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
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
Meanwhile it's 100% possible to torch your system without warning with
rm -rf
in the wrong place and I love that.what's rm-rf?
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 directorystuff/
which has filesa.txt
,b.pdf
, and subdirectoryc/
thenrm -r stuff/
would remove both files as well asc/
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 (thesudo
insudo 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 runsudo rm -rf /
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
It’s been a while since I’ve used
rm
non-recursively, but it should delete all of the files in the stuff directory but preserve any subdirectories and their contentsAnd formatting for code is `___`
is a subdirectory basically the linux version of a folder?
Directories and folders are the same thing, yes.
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/44967/difference-between-cp-r-and-cp-a
test
test
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: `
To be fair, doing registry editing in Windows can end that way to. Or deleting system 32.
Oh yeah totally. I'm biased by my experiences, but I think there's much more of a risk with Windows, you have to go pretty far out of your way to actually nuke your whole system with
rm
, it's very hard to do on accident. Now,dd
on the other hand...