Git repos have lots of write protected files in the .git
directory, sometimes hundreds, and the default rm my_project_managed_by_git
will prompt before deleting each write protected file. So, to actually delete my project I have to do rm -rf my_project_managed_by_git
.
Using rm -rf
scares me. Is there a reasonable way to delete git repos without it?
More like, I’m afraid of the command doing more than I’m trying to do.
What I want to do is ignore prompts about write-protected files in the
.git
directory, what it does is ignore all prompts for all files.What about adding the flags last?
rm deletethisrepo -rf
so why not
rm -rf folder/.git/*
thenrm -r folder/*
Maybe they’re afraid of accidentally writing
rm -rf folder/.git /*
or somethingThat’s a good example. If I’m regularly running a command that is a single whitespace character away from disaster, that’s a problem.
Imagine a fighter aircraft that had an eject button on the side of the flight stick. The pilot complains “I’m afraid I might accidentally hit the eject button when I don’t need to”, but everyone responds “why would you push the eject button if you don’t want to eject?”, or “so your concern is that the eject button will cause you to eject…?” – That’s how I feel right now.
Generally that is not a concern because regular users won’t be able to
rm
anything else other than those in his own $HOME.Another thing I want to say is, command line is for careful users. If someone is careless, they should create a wrapper around
rm
, or just use a FM.I think that’s the situation OP is in… They don’t trust themself with these kinds of commands, while other commenters here are trying to convince them that they should just use rm -rf anyway