Remove a symlink to a directory

Question

I have a symlink to an important directory. I want to get rid of that symlink, while keeping the directory behind it.

I tried rm and get back rm: cannot remove 'foo'.
I tried rmdir and got back rmdir: failed to remove 'foo': Directory not empty
I then progressed through rm -f, rm -rf and sudo rm -rf

Then I went to find my back-ups.

Is there a way to get rid of the symlink with out throwing away the baby with the bathwater?

Answer 1

# this works: rm foo # versus this, which doesn't: rm foo/ 

Basically, you need to tell it to delete a file, not delete a directory. I believe the difference between rm and rmdir exists because of differences in the way the C library treats each.

At any rate, the first should work, while the second should complain about foo being a directory.

If it doesn't work as above, then check your permissions. You need write permission to the containing directory to remove files.