Not able to delete file by rm command in Linux

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This article is part of a unix shell scripting tutorial. We must know liitle things like below while writing shell scripts in linux.

Sometimes, we are not able to delete files from directory in Linux. There are many reasons due to which we can’t delete that files as I have given example. Below filename which I have mentioned, its name starts with – that’s why we can’t delete it directly.

You can see just list of files before issue.

root@hello:~/test/hello# ls a.sh  a.txt  file2  module  test.html  -unable.txt root@hello:~/test/hello#

I am creating file which will not delete by normal rm command.

root@hello:~/test/hello# cat > -unable.txt Hello How are you root@hello:~/test/hello# root@hello:~/test/hello# ls a.sh  a.txt  file2  module  test.html  -unable.txt

rm command facing the issue while deleting that file. We are getting errors.

root@hello:~/test/hello# rm "-unable.txt" rm: invalid option -- 'u' Try `rm ./-unable.txt' to remove the file `-unable.txt'. Try `rm --help' for more information. root@hello:~/test/hello# rm -rf "-unable.txt" rm: invalid option -- 'u' Try `rm ./-unable.txt' to remove the file `-unable.txt'. Try `rm --help' for more information. root@hello:~/test/hello#

There is only one way to resolve this issue is that check inode for that file by ls command with –i option. It will give us inode number in first column for that file.

root@hello:~/test/hello# ls -lrti total 100 5770436 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 80878 2012-11-03 18:00 test.html 5770345 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root    45 2012-11-05 21:59 file2 5770346 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root  4096 2012-11-05 22:35 module 5770437 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root    11 2012-11-09 16:50 a.txt 5770440 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   128 2012-11-09 16:50 a.sh 5770079 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root    19 2013-06-03 22:04 -unable.txt root@hello:~/test/hello#

Use above inode number in find command to search file and delete it by using rm command inside the –exec option. Finally, we have successfully deleted that file.

root@hello:~/test/hello# find . -inum 5770079 -exec rm -rf {} \; root@hello:~/test/hello# ls a.sh  a.txt  file2  module  test.html root@hello:~/test/hello#

This case not belong to only the file names whose name starts with – character but also in some other cases like- if file not created properly then we can’t delete it etc. If you are not able to delete files then just use this trick, it will be helpful for all cases.


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