Most people use rm -i ( 21.11 ) for safety: so they're always asked for confirmation before removing a particular file. Mike Loukides told me about another way he uses rm -i . When he has several files to remove, but the wildcards ( 1.16 ) would be too painful to type with a plain rm , Mike gives rm -i a bigger list of filenames and answers "n" to filenames he doesn't want deleted. For instance:
%ls
aberrant abhorred abnormal abominate acerbic aberrate abhorrent abominable absurd acrimonious ... %rm -i ab*
rm: remove aberrant (y/n)?y
rm: remove aberrate (y/n)?n
rm: remove abhorred (y/n)?y
rm: remove abhorrent (y/n)?n
...
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