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From: grog@lemis.de (Greg Lehey)
Organisation: LEMIS, Schellnhausen 2, 36325 Feldatal, Germany
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	id JAA09789; Tue, 9 Jul 1996 09:47:36 +0200
Message-Id: <199607090747.JAA09789@allegro.lemis.de>
Subject: Re: Deleting a tree
To: compland@ism.com.br (Helio Coelho Jr. - CompuLand Informatica)
Date: Tue, 9 Jul 1996 09:47:36 +0200 (MET DST)
Cc: questions@FreeBSD.org (FreeBSD Questions)
In-Reply-To: <199607081959.QAA28587@unix1.ism.com.br> from "Helio Coelho Jr. - CompuLand Informatica" at Jul 8, 96 04:59:24 pm
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Helio Coelho Jr. - CompuLand Informatica writes:
>
> Hi Greg:
>
>   Sorry about the confusion. My question is: sometimes you want to
> remove an application you installed. For example: /usr/local/sendmail.
> I want to remove the sub-directory sendmail and all it's contents, without
> going into sendmail, deleting the files and after going into all of the
> subdirectories of sendmail, deleting all the files. I checked rmdir man
> page and seems to me that you only can remove an EMPTY directory. If there is
> a single file inside this directory, you have to go there, delete the file
> first, step out,  and then you can remove the directory. But it sometimes
> is tedious. If the directory has 10 sub-directories inside it, you have to
> remove one by one, by hand! I though of a script, that can recurse into the
> directory you selected and remove the files inside it, and after remove the
> directory itself.

OK.  You don't need a script.  I gave you the answer for that:

  # rm -rf /usr/local/sendmail

The -r option says "recursively descend into subdirectories and delete
them".  The -f option says "don't ask questions".

> I know that, if you remove the directory only, the files will be there,
> in the disk. I wonder if there's a script that can, recursively remove
> all the contents of the directory you selected and any sub-directory it
> might have, and after that remove the directory itself. (Like Deltree,in DOS).
>
>>
>> Whichever it is, you haven't made your request clear.  Do you make a
>> distinction between archives and files?
>
> Yes.

Sorry, this time I didn't make myself clear.  *How* do you distinguish
between archives and files?  In UNIX, an archive is just a special
kind of file.  In this example, I still don't understand.  Are you
referring to the archives you used for installation, outside the trees
you're deleting?  Of course they won't be deleted.

Greg