Symbolic Link

[vandorjw]

Hey Everyone,

I have a neat problem, something I haven't seen before.

I have made a symbolic link of a folder, and wish to remove this link.
This is the result.

[****@BlackFedora Dropbox]$ rm Pictures/
rm: cannot remove `Pictures/': Is a directory

[****@BlackFedora Dropbox]$ rmdir Pictures/
rmdir: failed to remove `Pictures/': Not a directory

[****@BlackFedora Dropbox]$ rm Pictures/
rm: cannot remove `Pictures/': Is a directory

What is going on here?

Extra hints

[vandorp@BlackFedora Dropbox]$ ls -l
total 256
lrwxrwxrwx 1 home-user home-user 23 Jun 6 17:31 Pictures -> /home/home-user/Pictures/

[spjackson]

rm Pictures

Note, no trailing slash.

[Cheesemill]

My default rm doesn't delete directories, you have to use the -r switch.

rm -r Pictures

It doesn't make a difference whether you type the trailing slash or not.

[spjackson]

My default rm doesn't delete directories, you have to use the -r switch.

@Cheesemill Perhaps I'm mistaken, but from the topic and 'ls -l' in the OP, I had understood that the intent was to remove a link to a directory, not to remove a directory. Apologies if I've misunderstood.

[Cheesemill]

@Cheesemill Perhaps I'm mistaken, but from the topic and 'ls -l' in the OP, I had understood that the intent was to remove a link to a directory, not to remove a directory. Apologies if I've misunderstood.

Yep, you're right. I was getting it mixed up with something else. You just need:

rm Pictures