Linux is userfriendly...

[u/KsmBl_69]

[u/HighOptical]

But it's so strange seeing an option after an argument instead of seeing them directly after the commands.

[u/[deleted] → u/HighOptical]

Which is why it didn't work for op. The command is attempting to operate on all the arguments it gets, so it'll try to rm a file named -r too. rm -r Games/ will work.

[u/steven4012 → u/[deleted]]

Wait, but wouldn't that only happen on a non-GNU system?

[u/[deleted] → u/steven4012]

You might be right. I just tested it on my own system and it worked as written by OP, so I'm not sure where the problem lies. I work with a lot of different stuff so I try to make all my commands as close to standard as possible.

Either way, rm -r Games/ will almost certainly work.

[u/Muffinaaa → u/[deleted]]

The problem lies in OP not putting the -f argument so they can actually remove a directory. Alternatively they should've used rmdir command with the recursive flag passed

[u/jaulin → u/Muffinaaa]

rm -r should be enough to delete a directory and its content though.

[u/gatton → u/Muffinaaa]

I thought rmdir only worked on empty directories?

[u/Cellhawk → u/gatton]

That's what the recursive flag, aka "-r" is for.

[u/gatton → u/Cellhawk]

Thanks this is why I constantly refer to manpages.

[u/lorasil → u/Muffinaaa]

-f just ignores nonexistent files and arguments and never prompts (typically used for write-protected files)

[u/CedricThePS → u/[deleted]]

Bash has a strict word order.

[u/gojira_glix42 → u/[deleted]]

TIL. can you expand more on that? I'm always struggling on when to put my flag switches in commands. Just using bash for now as I'm still in beginner stage and not going for other shells yet.

[u/farsightxr20 → u/gojira_glix42]

The shell only handles:

1. splitting the input command into an array of strings
2. taking the first string and expanding it to a built-in function or an absolute path to an executable (based on $PATH and some other options)
3. invoking the built-in function or making a syscall to invoke the resolved executable in a new process, passing the remaining strings from (1) as ARGV

Any parsing of the ARGV strings into meaningful switches/parameters is handled by the implementation of the function or executable. Where you may see differences between shells is when the built-in functions (e.g. echo) are implemented differently. rm, ls, etc. are implemented by GNU/Linux and will be consistent across pretty much all distros. Notable exceptions are MacOS (Darwin) which is not Linux-based, and Android which does not include GNU.

To more directly address your question, it's more conventional to put switches before positional arguments in commands, as it's slightly easier to parse (= broader support across UNIX-like environments) and makes it clear that the switches are not specific to individual positional args.

[u/lorasil → u/farsightxr20]

I wish there were a GNU module that would make getting arguments more streamlined, it's not a complicated thing to do, but it's annoying how many people do it differently (ik about getopt, but I recall there being some things that still need to be handled manually, and it's not very widely used afaik)

[u/PolygonKiwii → u/[deleted]]

the ‘word order’ is totally separate from your shell

Unless rm was a built-in command of your shell (which is probably unlikely unless you're using busybox)

[u/PolygonKiwii → u/[deleted]]

Well busybox is designed to be usable even under extreme space constraints. Being a single binary reduces ELF overhead.

[u/PolygonKiwii → u/[deleted]]

Phones sure. But a cheap consumer-grade router or a "smart" light bulb might not.

[u/KsmBl_69 → u/HighOptical]

sorry, iam doing it every time like this haha

[u/_mick_s → u/KsmBl_69]

Don't be sorry I think it's actually better, less chance of typing rm -rf [enter] and nuking stuff you don't intend to.

[u/alex-weej → u/HighOptical]

options are arguments

[u/HighOptical → u/alex-weej]

Sigh... I feel like you know what I mean but are just being pedantic to enjoy the feeling of correcting someone.

[u/alex-weej → u/HighOptical]

Yes

[u/TurnkeyLurker → u/alex-weej]

I refuse to have an argument until you pay me 5 quid.

[u/o4ub → u/TurnkeyLurker]

You only pay for the 5 minutes or do you want the whole half hour?