Ubuntu Unleashed 2013 Edition: Covering 12.10 and 13.04, Eighth Edition

Deleting a File or Directory with rm

To delete a file named filename, use this command:

matthew@seymour:~$ rm filename

You can remove a directory in a different location by changing what is after rm. To remove a directory in /home/matthew/randomdirectory, if I am already in my /home directory, I can use the following:

matthew@seymour:~$ rm randomdirectory/filename

Or from anywhere using an absolute path, I can use this:

matthew@seymour:~$ rm /home/matthew/randomdirectory/filename

Or from anywhere using a path shortcut, I can use the following command:

matthew@seymour:~$ rm ~/randomdirectory/filename

If you try to use rm to remove an empty directory, you will receive an error message: rm: cannot remove `random/': Is a directory. In this case, ...