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An administrator needs to remove the directory /home/user1/data and all of its contents. Which of the following commands should the administrator use?
File and directory management is a core system administration skill addressed in Linux+ V8. When an administrator needs to delete a directory that contains files or subdirectories, a recursive deletion is required.
The correct command is rm -r /home/user1/data. The rm command removes files, and the -r (recursive) option allows it to delete directories and all of their contents, including nested files and subdirectories. This is the standard and correct method for removing non-empty directories.
The other options are incorrect. rmdir -p only removes empty directories and will fail if the directory contains files. ln -d is used to create directory hard links, not remove directories. cut -d is a text-processing command unrelated to filesystem operations.
Linux+ V8 documentation stresses caution when using rm -r, as it permanently deletes data without recovery unless backups exist. Therefore, the correct answer is C.