I learned that -i option is interactive mode and -f option is force model in rm command.
When I tried both options
rm -if test.txt
it did not ask me and just deleted it which means -f option overrode -i option.
Of course, I would not use options -i and -f at the same time in real life. But I wonder if there is a priority if two contradictory options are used at the same time.
I tried this in Ubuntu 22.04.
In general: no, Unix commands do not have a notion of flag priority.
From the Open Group Base Spec section on Utility Arguments
The use of conflicting mutually-exclusive arguments produces undefined results, unless a utility description specifies otherwise.
It's up to the command implicitly decide which one has priority or perhaps warn or error if conflicting flags are given.
As noted, in the case of rm, -f will override any previous -i.
As another example, if you ask tar to both create and archive -c and extract an archive -x, it'll complain that you're not making sense:
$ tar cxf test
tar: You may not specify more than one '-Acdtrux', '--delete' or '--test-label' option
In addition to @ckhan's answer: the implementations of rm I worked with always considered the last given argument as final. That means:
rm -fi# will work interactively
rm -if# will work non-interactively
rm -ffifi# will work interactively
etc.. For instance, the AIX manpage (AIX 7.2) states:
If both the -f and -i flags are specified, the last one specified takes affect.
rm -fi test.txtto see what happens. The options are read in order and the last option's functionality is what is enforced. And you might not plan on using this in real life but many paranoid people aliaslstols -iand then might be caught byls -f foo.info coreutils 'rm invocation') notes under-fthat it will "Ignore any previous ‘--interactive’ (‘-i’) option."cp -fdoesn't override-i: unix.stackexchange.com/questions/744420/…