I have a directory, dir. Inside dir, there are symlinks and regular subdirectories. I want to remove dir and create a symlink for dir to point to another directory.
If I simply do rm -rf dir, I believe this should remove all the subdirectories and symlinks within dir, but is this safe to do when there are symlinks within dir?
Yes, it would be safe to remove the directory and its contents using rm -rf dir. That operation would not follow symbolic links and would therefore not remove files or directories that are located outside of dir. The POSIX specification for rm specifically mentions this with regard to recursive operation:
The
rmutility shall not traverse directories by following symbolic links into other parts of the hierarchy, but shall remove the links themselves.
If dir itself is a symbolic link (you say it's a directory, so this may not apply to your situation), then that symbolic link will be removed, but not the thing that it points to. Note that in this case, rm -rf dir/ (with the final slash added) would dereference the symbolic link and delete the directory that the link points to, while the symbolic link would remain.
rm -rf dir/ where dir is a symlink, removes that symlink (and/or the target and its contents) is system / rm implementation dependant.
/home3in that question is a symlink? If it isn't, then I think it doesdirin your question a symlink?