Why doesn't rm --dry-run exist?

[pedrogfrancisco]

The idea struck me from nowhere and I find it weird nobody has asked this before but...

How come nobody remembered to create an option to rm which would allow one to see the effect of the rm command but without actually doing it?


rm -s some_dir_to_be_deleted/
or/and

rm --dry-run some_dir_to_be_deleted/


from apt-get's man page:

-s, --simulate, --just-print, --dry-run, --recon, --no-act
No action; perform a simulation of events that would occur but do
not actually change the system. (...)

[Oldsoldier2003]

Probably because rm has the -i and -I flags... a --dryrun or --simulate would be pretty useless for exceptionally large directories.

Thats just my personal take on it.

[pedrogfrancisco]

You clearly haven't deleted all your Desktop's files because you were too lazy to write the whole directory name (yes it doesn't make sense, but it did happen ;) )

Plus on out-of-the-box things, like for instance, deleting all hidden files in a directory, a --dry-run option would be very nice...

Most people I know the first time that tried to delete all hidden files through the console made rm go to the parent directory and so on.....

[Too Late]

I agree. It would be very nice feature! Yes, the -i option can do quite the same thing, but it's not very nice to press 'n' and 'enter' all the time. In addition, you have to press 'y' and 'enter' when it asks the "descend into directory" question.

[pedrogfrancisco]

On second thought, one can test the correctness of one syntax doing an ls with the same string.

Which on the above example would be:

ls -lR ./.??*
to confirm that the string actually did what was expected (taken from here (http://www.labtestproject.com/linuxcmd/rm.html))

[akabdog]

You could also use
#yes no | rm -ri *
this will work similarly to a dry run, it's automatically answering 'no' at the prompts

[spibou]

But this way rm will not descend into directories at all so you won't get to see what it would erase inside those directories.

[Denestria]

You clearly haven't deleted all your Desktop's files because you were too lazy to write the whole directory name

If you were too lazy to to enter the whole directory then you're probably going to be too lazy to do a --dry-run before actually executing the command.

[spibou]

If you were too lazy to to enter the whole directory then you're probably going to be too lazy to do a --dry-run before actually executing the command.
Not to mention actually reading the output of the dry run ;-)

[geirha]

You can use find to delete recursively.


find /some/path # Lists what will be deleted, add -ls to get a listing like "ls -l"
find /some/path -delete # Delete.