CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershellcommandcmdrm
BK_
BK_

Reputation: 963

Powershell Command: rm -rf

rm is to remove item, but what is the parameter -rf do or signify?

Whenever I typed help -rf it printed the entire list of available commands in powershell. What happens if you type rm -rf in powershell? From reading around I've gathered that it will delete everything on the drive? I'm not sure?

Also, is rm -rf same as rm -rf /?

Upvotes: 96

Views: 142578

Answers (3)

Amin Ya
Amin Ya

Reputation: 1958

This is the one-liner that behaves like rm -rf. It first checks for the existence of the path and then tries removing it.

if (Test-Path ./your_path) { rm -r -force ./your_path}

Upvotes: 7

Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
Mahmoud Al-Qudsi

Reputation: 29579

PowerShell isn't UNIX. rm -rf is UNIX shell code, not PowerShell scripting.

  • This is the documentation for rm (short for Remove-Item) on PowerShell.
  • This is the documentation for rm on UNIX.

See the difference?

On UNIX, rm -rf alone is invalid. You told it what to do via rm for remove with the attributes r for recursive and f for force, but you didn't tell it what that action should be done on. rm -rf /path/to/delete/ means rm (remove) with attributes r (recursive) and f (force) on the directory /path/to/remove/ and its sub-directories.

The correct, equivalent command on PowerShell would be:

rm C:\path\to\delete -r -fo

Note that -f in PowerShell is ambiguous for -Filter and -Force and thus -fo needs to be used.

Upvotes: 172

Kai Sternad
Kai Sternad

Reputation: 22840

You have to use:

Remove-Item C:\tmp -Recurse -Force

or (short)

rm C:\tmp -Recurse -Force

Upvotes: 50

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