By: Johan Cyprich

Johan Cyprich — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 23:12:33 +0000

Hi Steve. corykrug on Twitter said you can recursively delete all files and directories with

rm – rf *

Its probably a good idea giving a full path when deleting files just to be safe.

By: steve.lippert

steve.lippert — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 19:28:05 +0000

While this is a quick way to remove an entire directory in linux you really must take caution in using it.

I always go with the full path to remove directories
rm -Rf /var/www/vhost/subdomain.cyprich.com
instead of
rm -Rf subdomain.cyprich.com

which may be correct if I am in /var/www/vhosts, but would be wrong if I am in say my home directory.

I have borked a dev system by running rm -Rf in /etc instead of in /tmp like I wanted to do.

It’s a rookie mistake I admit, but something that can also be learned from.