rm -rf : What does it really do

[Tim Wunder]

On Saturday 03 May 2003 9:31 am, someone claiming to be Joel Hammer wrote:
> Just an idle thought while waiting for rm -rf* to remove a 40 gig
> directory.
>
> This is taking quite a while. Does  rm just unlink files, leaving the
> data recoverable, or does it make the date unrecoverable?
>

rm = remove
-f = force
-r = recursive

But you know that.  I guess I don't understand the question. What do you mean 
by "just unlink files" and "leaving the data recoverable"?

Tim


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