How to remove a symbolic link to a directory?

Question

I made a symbolic link with the following commmand:

ln -s ../test5

I want to remove it now but my rm fails:

$ rm -Rf test5/
rm: cannot remove `test5/': Not a directory
$ rm test5/
rm: cannot remove directory `test5/': Is a directory
$ rmdir test5/
rmdir: test5/: Not a directory
$rm -r test5/
rm: cannot remove `test5/': Not a directory

$ls -l
 0 lrwxrwxrwx  1 peter peter    8 Jul 20 15:30 test5 -> ../test5/

How can I remove my symbolic link? (Ubuntu 8.10, bash)

Answer 1

Remove the trailing slash:

With prompt:

$ rm test5

Without prompt:

$ rm -f test5

Answer 2

Try rm test5
(without the training slash).

The slash indicates that 'test5' is a direactory whereas it's actually a file linking to a directory.

Answer 3

You can run removing the trailing slash:

$ rm -Rf test5

This will remove the file (ie the symlink).

Alternatively you may use unlink:

$ unlink test5

Again you must omit the trailing slash since you are attempting to unlink the symlink not the directory.

Answer 4

I feel silly asking, but have you tried rm -r? Since it's a symbolic link it shouldn't delete the target.

Edit: Just tried it, it's correct

Edit 2: rmdir says in its first line of the man page it deletes empty directories. I would think because it's a link it had the directory bit checked on its file properties, but because rmdir doesn't suspect that being the case it spits errors. Just use rm -r