---
name: "rmbin"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "iraf"
version: "2.11.3-2"
release: "Debian 3.0 (Woody)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/rmbin"
---

# rmbin(1)

find/remove binary files in subdirectories \[IRAF\]

## NAME

rmbin - find/remove binary files in subdirectories \[IRAF\]

## SYNOPSIS

**rmbin** \[*-dinrv*\] \[*-o extns*\] \[*-e extns*\] *dir1 dir2* ... *dirN*

## DESCRIPTION

*The* **rmbin** task is used to descend a directory tree, deleting (or listing) all the binary files therein.  The task may also be used to delete or list nonbinary files by explicitly listing their extensions.

**rmbin** is used the strip the IRAF system down to the sources, prior to a full system rebuild.  After changing to the IRAF root directory, one runs **rmbin** to delete all the binaries in lib, sys, pkg, etc. (but *not* in hlib, else a bootstrap will be necessary too).  **mkpkg** is then run to recompile the system; this currently takes about 20 hours on our UNIX 11/750 development system, provided nothing else is running on the system.

## OPTIONS

- **-d**

  Disable recursive descent into subdirectories.

- **-e *extns***

  Exclude files with the listed extensions (whitespace delimited).

- **-i**

  Verify before deleting files without extensions.  Files with well known extensions like ".\[aoe\]" are deleted without a query.  A heuristic (ZFACSS) is used to determine the filetype of files with unknown extensions, and it can fail, though in practice it works quite well.

- **-n**

  No execute; do not delete files.  This option may be used to generate a list of binary files for some purpose other than deletion.  For example, on a UNIX host, the following command will compute the disk space used by the binary files in a directory tree:

          % du \`rmbin -n .\`

  The -n option, of course, is also useful for verifying the delete operation before destroying the files.

- **-o *extns***

  Delete only files with the listed extensions (whitespace delimited).

- **-r**

  Reenable recursive descent.  Recursive descent is the default, however it may be turned off at one point in the command line, and later reenabled with this switch.

- **-v**

  Print names of files as they are deleted.

Note that flags may be inserted between directory name arguments to change switches for different directories.

## EXAMPLES

1\. Delete all binaries in the pkg and sys directories of IRAF.  The example is for a UNIX host, but this works for all other IRAF hosts as well.

```
        % cd $iraf
        % rmbin -v pkg sys
```

## SEE ALSO

[**rtar**(1)](/rtar/1.md), [**wtar**(1)](/wtar/1.md), [**mkpkg**(1)](/mkpkg/1.md).

## AUTHOR

This manual page was taken from rmbin.hlp in the IRAF sources.