rm * option

[sfmd6307]

If a rm * were entered in a directory, what type files would not be removed by this? We had some files with a name.type format that were removed, and some with the same naming convention that weren't. I'm not sure why this happened. Thanks

 

[mrmac228]

Depends on the protection on the remaining files and whether they had a '.' in front of them.

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by - Douglas Adams

 

[grega]

It also won't remove directories.

Greg.

 

[chipperMDW]

Some other possible reasons:

Some versions of rm will ask for confirmation before removing files with no write access. If it gets run from a script and can't get confirmation, I assume it might just leave those alone.

It's possible that some versions of rm, when run with no options and confronted with a symlink, remove the pointed-to file instead of the symlink. Those versions of rm would scare me.

Depending on the OS and/or filesystem, there might be additional properties of the a file that keeps it from being deleted (e.g. an immutable bit).

If you have a weird setup where some files in a directory are on one mounted filesystem and others are on a different one (possible with shadowed filesystems), files on a filesystem mounted read-only would of course not be deleted.