• 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.