• Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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      5 hours ago

      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!

      • setsubyou@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        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 can’t 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.