Ubuntu - utilities ask about each file?

Question

I'm using Ubuntu 12.10 after doing something like sudo rm *.log it asks me about each file.

do you want to delete 1234.log y/n ? do you want to delete 12345.log y/n ?

It is having this same behavior with tar

add file 1234.log to folder.tar ? y/n

If i press enter it skips the file. Is there a way to disable this ? I don't remember this being the default behavior.

Man pages should really be your first stop before asking questions like this. — EEAA, Jul 25 '13 at 21:20
This question appears to be off-topic because there is no evidence that the user researched the question on their own before coming here. — EEAA, Jul 25 '13 at 21:25
You ssh into your system, type `man rm` and then start reading. — EEAA, Jul 25 '13 at 21:29

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 25 '13 at 21:22

Looks like you are tripping over a feature. Check your shell environment and aliases to see if -i is being added to your commands and note that for at least rm Ubuntu may well have shipped it this way on purpose.

Here is the information for the safe-rm package in 12.10 (QQ) release.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 25 '13 at 21:19

From the rm man page:

-f, --force
              ignore nonexistent files, never prompt

With regards to tar, it sounds as if you're using the -w flag, which asks for confirmation for each file. Are you using that flag? If not, perhaps there is a shell alias set up for tar which uses that flag by default.

Ubuntu - utilities ask about each file?

2 Answers2