Feature request: rm should implement option -p, --parents (original) (raw)

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From: Guido Flohr
Subject: Feature request: rm should implement option -p, --parents
Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 15:57:51 +0100 (GMT+01:00)

Hi,

desired behavior:

$ mkdir /usr/share/myapp
$ mkdir /usr/share/myapp/pixmaps
$ mkdir /usr/share/myapp/pixmaps/8x16
$ install -m 644 icon.png /usr/share/myapp/pixmaps/8x16/

Uninstalling with clean up in such cases is a frequent task, and could be greatly simplified by:

$ rm --parents /usr/share/myapp/pixmaps/8x16/icon.png
rm: failed to remove `/usr/share': Directory not empty
$ ls /usr/share/myapp
ls: cannot access /usr/share/myapp: No such file or directory

The idea is to remove the containing directory of a file recursively, upwards, and stop that recursion on the first failure to remove a directory, most probably because of ENOTEMPTY.

The same idea could be applied to chmod, chgrp, and chown.

Cheers, Guido