When is git rm -f used?

git git-rm
Mohnish picture Mohnish · Nov 15, 2011 · Viewed 17.5k times · Source

I am learning Git and am unable to understand under what condition the -f flag is used while issuing the "git rm" command. Please explain a scenario where rm -f would be required instead of rm only?

Answer

Andy picture Andy · Nov 15, 2011

Explanation:

The -f is used to remove a file if the file is not up to date with your last checked out commit. It is to prevent you from removing a file that you have made changes to, but have not yet checked them in.


Example:

You check out commit 0a12d4 that contains the file sample.txt. Before you change any files, you could remove the sample.txt with git rm sample.txt. However, once you make a change to sample.txt, you would need to use git rm -f sample.txt to remove the file

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