rm -rf return codes

To see the return code, you can use echo $? in bash.

To see the actual meaning, some platforms (like Debian Linux) have the perror binary available, which can be used as follows:

$ rm -rf something/; perror $?
rm: cannot remove `something/': Permission denied
OS error code   1:  Operation not permitted

rm -rf automatically suppresses most errors. The most likely error you will see is 1 (Operation not permitted), which will happen if you don't have permissions to remove the file. -f intentionally suppresses most errors

grabbed coreutils from git....

looking at exit we see...

openfly@linux-host:~/coreutils/src $ cat rm.c | grep -i exit
  if (status != EXIT_SUCCESS)
  exit (status);
  /* Since this program exits immediately after calling 'rm', rm need not
  atexit (close_stdin);
          usage (EXIT_FAILURE);
        exit (EXIT_SUCCESS);
          usage (EXIT_FAILURE);
        error (EXIT_FAILURE, errno, _("failed to get attributes of %s"),
        exit (EXIT_SUCCESS);
  exit (status == RM_ERROR ? EXIT_FAILURE : EXIT_SUCCESS);

Now looking at the status variable....

openfly@linux-host:~/coreutils/src $ cat rm.c | grep -i status
usage (int status)
  if (status != EXIT_SUCCESS)
  exit (status);
  enum RM_status status = rm (file, &x);
  assert (VALID_STATUS (status));
  exit (status == RM_ERROR ? EXIT_FAILURE : EXIT_SUCCESS);

looks like there isn't much going on there with the exit status.

I see EXIT_FAILURE and EXIT_SUCCESS and not anything else.

so basically 0 and 1 / -1

To see specific exit() syscalls and how they occur in a process flow try this

openfly@linux-host:~/ $ strace rm -rf $whatever 

fairly simple.

ref:

http://www.unix.com/man-page/Linux/EXIT_FAILURE/exit/