what is ./directoryname anyway?


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I've been touched Linux 1 months now, but still got puzzled by this.

why we have these "./directoryname" in our home directory? what are those used for?

and why when we remove some packages from our system, but those directories are still there?

can we remove them as well anyway?

thank you.

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If you mean ~/.xmms and so on, they are used to store your settings for various programs. I'd only delete them if you are sure you don't need the program any more.

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./directoryname is NOT a hidden directory. If you go "cd directoryname" its the same thing as doing "cd ./directoryname" the dot . specifies the current directory, so if you're in /home/neo and you type cd ./directoryname its like typing cd /home/neo/directoryname

.directoryname IS a hidden directory. you can see hidden directories by typing ls -a .. hidden directories are usually used to store user preferences data (like the email for thunderbird, profile for firefox, etc.)

You can remove them like normal directories rm -r .directoryname

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so how do I supposed to delete them?

cuz I cannot see them in normal terminal mode.

thank you.

rm will remove it.

Linux uses a . as the first character to mean "hidden".

Use ls -a to show all files.

So, a remove would be rm -r .dirname

Try that.

(and the reason that they are typically not removed when uninstalling is when you upgrade an app, you might not want to lose all of your configuration. :yes:

[EDIT: too late :pinch: ]

[another EDIT: apparently I can't think straight - corrected error that hellbender pointed out :trout: ]

Edited by markjensen
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why would you want to remove one? The only reason I could think of is if firefox wasn't working right and you wanted to start a clean firefox profile.

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The Original Poster asked about them, and why they stayed after removing a program. :)

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