Rm behavior in linux

Question

If I'm in a directory like:

/home/usr_name/Documents/test

And, accidentally, I launch:

rm .*

What happens?
I thought it would remove all the files that contained a dot.. but I definitely was wrong!

uhm.. I'm sure that something has been deleted.. maybe command was "rm .*" — SirDeveloper, Apr 29 '14 at 15:40
I hope it was not `rm .*` because this one matches way more things. — fedorqui, Apr 29 '14 at 15:42
damn... looking in history yes, is "rm .*".. in this case what happens? — SirDeveloper, Apr 29 '14 at 15:45
It may have deleted any files inside hidden dirs (those that have name starting with `.`), current dir (it is `.`) and dir above current (it is `..`). So if you are in `/home/me`, you may have deleted files in `/home`, `/home/me` and `/home/me/.dir` — fedorqui, Apr 29 '14 at 15:48
See my answer. But in general, if you do `rm (something)` and then immediately follow it with `ls (something)` the `ls` is going to report no matching files, because you already deleted them. — davmac, Apr 29 '14 at 15:49

davmac · Answer 1 · 2014-04-29T15:47:42.133

2

It matches .* according to the globbing rules of your shell. For the shells I'm familiar with (bash, tcsh) it will match all files beginning with a dot. Use *.* for all files containing a dot or *. for all files ending with a dot.

In general, * matches any sequence of characters; however, it will not usually match a leading dot (i.e. * by itself won't match filenames beginning with a dot, but .* will).

edited Apr 29 '14 at 15:47

answered Apr 29 '14 at 15:35

davmac

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please take a look at edit, command was rm .* – SirDeveloper Apr 29 '14 at 15:46
I have edited the answer accordingly. – davmac Apr 29 '14 at 15:48

brokenfoot · Answer 2 · 2014-04-29T15:50:42.750

1

When using rm and not sure about using wild characters *, always do a

ls .*

whatever is the output, that is what rm is going to work on when you do a rm .*

edited Apr 29 '14 at 15:50

answered Apr 29 '14 at 15:37

brokenfoot

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ls: cannot access *.: No such file or directory – SirDeveloper Apr 29 '14 at 15:38
then `rm` won't do anything here. And moreover it means file ending with a `.` in its name. Do you have any such files in your directory ? Add a `ls -al` output in your question. – brokenfoot Apr 29 '14 at 15:40
please take a look at edit, command was rm .* – SirDeveloper Apr 29 '14 at 15:46
It deleted everything with a `.` in begining of its name ! – brokenfoot Apr 29 '14 at 15:48

Rm behavior in linux

2 Answers2