Oh no, you!

  • 78 Posts
  • 3.51K Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: November 3rd, 2024

help-circle













  • Short answer: Nothing

    Long answer: It is part of a command that deletes everything. The only thing missing is the argument specifying what to delete. Examples:

    rm -rf *
    rm -rf /some/directory
    

    It’s somewhat (in)famous because it’ll do so without asking for confirmation. The only exception is rm -rf / on a modern distro which will complain that you’re attempting to delete EVERYTHING on the system. In the olden days it’d just do it, but these days it tells you to add --no-preserve-root as well if you really wish to do so.