Editing Rm (Unix) (section)

== History ==
On some old versions of Unix, the <code>rm</code> command would remove directories if they were empty.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://man.cat-v.org/unix_8th/1/rm|title=rm page from Section 1 of the unix 8th manual|website=man.cat-v.org}}</ref> This behaviour can still be obtained in some versions of <code>rm</code> with the <code>-d</code> flag, e.g., the [[Berkeley Software Distribution|BSDs]] (such as [[FreeBSD]],<ref>{{citation |url=http://modman.unixdev.net/?manpath=FreeBSD-5.4-RELEASE&page=rm&sektion=1&apropos= |title=RM(1) |work=FreeBSD-5.4-RELEASE |access-date=February 5, 2015 }}</ref> [[NetBSD]],<ref>{{citation |url=http://modman.unixdev.net/?manpath=NetBSD-2.0&page=rm&sektion=1&apropos= |title=RM(1) |work=NetBSD-2.0 |access-date=February 5, 2015 }}</ref> [[OpenBSD]]<ref>{{citation |url=http://modman.unixdev.net/?manpath=OpenBSD-3.6&page=rm&sektion=1&apropos= |title=RM(1) |work=OpenBSD-3.6 |access-date=February 5, 2015 }}</ref> and [[macOS]]) derived from 4.4BSD-Lite2.

The version in [[GNU Core Utilities]] was written by Paul Rubin, David MacKenzie, [[Richard Stallman]], and Jim Meyering.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://linux.die.net/man/1/rm|title=rm(1): remove files/directories - Linux man page|website=linux.die.net}}</ref> This version provides a <code>-d</code> option to help with compatibility.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/commit/src/rm.c?id=fdc2da7165d93c8065365999341173ad2a818833 |title=rm: new option --dir (-d) to remove empty directories |date=January 22, 2012 |author=Krzysztof Goj |website=coreutils.git }}</ref> The same functionality is provided by the standard <code>[[rmdir]]</code> command.