The obvious solution produces an exit code of 1:
bash$ rm -rf .*
rm: cannot remove directory `.'
rm: cannot remove directory `..'
bash$ echo $?
1
One possible solution will skip the "." and ".."
directories but will only delete files whose names
are longer than 3 characters:
bash$ rm -f .??*
Best Answer
Should catch all cases. The .??* will only match 3+ character filenames (as explained in previous answer), the .[^.] will catch any two character entries (other than ..).