this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2025
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I alias rm to rm -r for easy folder deleting
UGH that shit.
rm deletes a file. It can't delete a directory, you have to use
rmdir to delete a directory...as long as there's nothing in that directory. If there's anything in the directory, you have to know to use
rm -r to delete a directory and its contents, and no
rmdir -r isn't right somehow!
I don't think there's any reason to use
rmdirunless you write (Ba)sh scripts, and you want to make sure that the directory is indeed empty. Just userm -r.Also note that you can use
rmdir -p this/is/some/pathto remove all nested directories including the parent (thishere). But this will only work if there's exactly one directory per parent directory, and the last directory doesn't have any files (including directories). This might be helpful for some scripts.rmdir -risn't a thing, because that would invalidate the reason this command exists.Reminds me of a little annoyance I have with cat and ls. Yeah they technically do different things, one is for files and one is for directories. But so often I just find myself wishing I could use one command for both. Like making cat directory act as ls. Maybe I'm the only one who feels that way.
On Linux, rm can delete empty directories with -d too, not just with -r.
rmdir is the counterpart to mkdir, which creates empty directories, so of course it can only remove empty directories. After all mkdir canβt create full directories either. There however is rmdir -p as a counterpart to mkdir -p, so if there is something in the directory, you can use that, as long as the something is an empty directory.
Yeah it still has a certain "AAAAH! You didn't say simon says" feel to it when you're actually trying to get things done. Like imagine if you had to choose a different option from a context menu to delete a folder in a GUI. If there was an option for Remove File and another one placed a little elsewhere in the menu that says Remove Directory.
I'm still gonna call it an unsanded corner.
I feel like the main reason the distinction exists, is because deleting a whole directory can be potentially catastrophic.
I looked at Trashy yesterday, which gives you a command
trash my_filethat just moves the file into the trashcan folder. Well, and that decided to make no distinction between files and directories, which does make sense to me, since you can just restore a deleted directory.My solution: rm will remove an empty directory, while a full directory will throw either an "are you sure? y/N" or require you to use rm -r. Why have a command whose only job is to remove an empty directory?
Yeah, I feel like a big part of the reason it was designed like that, is because it was designed in the 70s, where you couldn't really throw up interactive prompts. But interactive prompts are also somewhat tricky for scripting, as it's difficult to detect whether a user could respond to the prompt, meaning the script might just hang there forever.
That's kind of the problem. You almost need separate tools for scripting and interactive use, but having separate tools is also not great, since people will inherently try to use the tool they know for everything...
Would "Danger" happen to be your middle name by any chance?
It is not like he put the f on it :)
That works, unless you mistype the file name, and delete some unrelated directory by mistake.