Talk:rm (Unix)

Short for "remove"?

This article says differently... --WayneMokane 04:35, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

That page has been {{fact}}ed; seems an unlikely etymology. æ² ✆ 2007‑01‑30t22:01z

Nothing on the current Robert Morris article backs up the theory that rm is short for Robert Morris. rm is consistent with the many two letter command names that have been in UNIX since very near the beginning: sh, cd, cp, ln, ed, ar, as, du, cu, id, lp, nm, od, ps, pg, tr to name but a few. Simon Marchese (talk) 11:29, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I have heard it from a noted security professional, that is was named after Robert Morris. The tool was a wrapper for delete, which at the time would not delete folders, nor was it recursive. The individual was told of this fact by Robert himself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.236.17.3 (talk) 15:20, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

I heard this story as well from probably the same professional that you are talking about. The story sounded rather incredulous and would make for an awesome origin story, so I tried emailing the guy about it, but he never responded to me. I've been working on confirming some of these Unix legends recently and thought maybe Ken Thompson could confirm this one so I wrote to Ken last night and already received a response saying that Ken himself wrote the 'rm' command that it does mean "remove". He also said that the command was written before 'rhm' (Robert Morris) was even a Unix user. It could be that Robert Morris really dropped in on his class as the guy claimed, but it turns out that the origin story he told is not true. Deltaray3 (talk) 13:19, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

I heard this same story today (7 May 2017), personalized for the instructor. He retold it as his friend, John Strand (https://www.sans.org/instructors/john-strand), was teaching a basic Linux class in which Robert Morris dropped in unannounced, claiming rm is his namesake. This makes at least the second incredulous friend-of-a-friend informal copyright claim. 17:32, 7 May 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.214.105.179 (talk)

Hrmmf! soft links

Shouldn't this page mention that soft links are not followed if you select rm -r? I know it is obvious that any sensible designer would design it that way, but for the paranoid among us (and this trait has been known to exist in programmers), wouldn't it nice to give people about to type it the comfort of saying so clearly and unequivocally? <not signing because the signup doesn't allow underscores> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.171.191.60 (talk • contribs) 00:57, 20 May 2007

This is probably implementation dependent and the man page will surely clear up any such nuances of behavior. --WayneMokane 14:27, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Removal of mantanence template.

We've been working on this for a while, and would this qualify for WP:MTR? --One Blue Hat^{❯❯❯ (talk)} 19:18, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Potential mistake - Meaning flipped

Currently, the article says:

The GNU version refuses to execute rm -rf / unless the --preserve-root option is included, which has been the default since version 6.4 of GNU Core Utilities.

(bolding mine.) I thought this seemed odd, so I looked deeper. Originally, the page said the exact opposite:

GNU rm refuses to execute rm -rf / if the --preserve-root option is given, which has been the default since version 6.4 of GNU Core Utilities was released in 2006.

(bolding mine.)

This is the specific revision that changed this. Since the original version seems to make more sense, I think there was some kind of an error made while working on the prose. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rm_%28Unix%29&diff=1290554698&oldid=1290550473

You're the editor, what do you think? User:Stevebroshar 2001:708:30:1220:40E7:7C86:C031:4D73 (talk) 05:42, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

The current description seems up to date.

GNU since c.2006 seems to presume the --preserve-root argument (e.g., it's implicitly there), and the only way not to use the argument is to explicitly disable it, with --no-preserve-root.

I agree that the article's current description reads confusing and can use some clarification, though.

Sources (not reliable for article inclusion): [1][2]. 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk} 08:16, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

Because deleting files recursively from / is generally not a good idea (nor a necessary one). In modern computers, the UEFI boot partition is mounted under /sys, which would get deleted in the process. Had that really happened, the user would be left with an unbootable machine, so modern OSes won't let you do it. 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk} 08:21, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

I think you've misunderstood the part I was referring to. The current prose is saying that to execute rm -rf /, you have to give it --preserve-root, which seems false to me. If you give it --preserve-root, it will in fact refuse to do so, as the original version says. Since 2006, --preserve-root is the default option, so it will also refuse to do so by default, and you have to manually give it --no-preserve-root to do so. I think "if" got replaced with "unless" during improvements to the prose, without considering that this flips the meaning. User:irisChronomia. 2001:708:30:1220:54F0:55AF:A852:410E (talk) 18:19, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. I indeed misunderstood. 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk} 03:31, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

Made the change. 2001:708:30:1220:1C28:5B7B:EA98:E6DA (talk) 03:45, 25 September 2025 (UTC)