Returning to the shell-lesson-data directory,
let’s tidy up this directory by removing the quotes.txt file we created.
The Unix command we’ll use for this is rm (short for ‘remove’):
$ rm quotes.txt
We can confirm the file has gone using ls:
$ ls quotes.txt
ls: cannot access 'quotes.txt': No such file or directory
The Unix shell doesn’t have a trash bin that we can recover deleted files from (though most graphical interfaces to Unix do). Instead, when we delete files, they are unlinked from the file system so that their storage space on disk can be recycled. Tools for finding and recovering deleted files do exist, but there’s no guarantee they’ll work in any particular situation, since the computer may recycle the file’s disk space right away.
rm SafelyWhat happens when we execute rm -i thesis_backup/quotations.txt?
Why would we want this protection when using rm?
If we try to remove the thesis directory using rm thesis,
we get an error message:
$ rm thesis
rm: cannot remove `thesis': Is a directory
This happens because rm by default only works on files, not directories.
rm can remove a directory and all its contents if we use the
recursive option -r, and it will do so without any confirmation prompts:
$ rm -r thesis
Given that there is no way to retrieve files deleted using the shell,
rm -r should be used with great caution
(you might consider adding the interactive option rm -r -i or just rm -ri).