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A question I already asked myself a few times is why I can't delete the current working directory using rm -r .

The shell does not have a problem with a non-existing directory as working directory, so I just created an alias for rm -r "../$(basename "$(pwd)")".

Why is there a difference between these two rms, while the output of realpath . and realpath "../$(basename "$(pwd)")" does not differ and the cwd of the rm is also the same?

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  • Not really a duplicate, but the answer is applicable here. Thanks for the link. But who downvotes here?! Commented Sep 28, 2015 at 9:25
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    I don't know, never downvote a duplicated question, just voting to close it. Commented Sep 28, 2015 at 9:33

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As explained in Does 'rm .*' ever delete the parent directory? the following part of the POSIX spec applies:

If either of the files dot or dot-dot are specified as the basename portion of an operand (that is, the final pathname component) or if an operand resolves to the root directory, rm shall write a diagnostic message to standard error and do nothing more with such operands.

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