RMDIR
Section: POSIX Programmer's Manual (1P)
Updated: 2017
Page Index
PROLOG
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.
The Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult
the corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior),
or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.
NAME
rmdir
--- remove directories
SYNOPSIS
rmdir [-p] dir...
DESCRIPTION
The
rmdir
utility shall remove the directory entry specified by each
dir
operand.
For each
dir
operand, the
rmdir
utility shall perform actions equivalent to the
rmdir()
function called with the
dir
operand as its only argument.
Directories shall be processed in the order specified. If a directory
and a subdirectory of that directory are specified in a single
invocation of the
rmdir
utility, the application shall specify the subdirectory before the
parent directory so that the parent directory will be empty when the
rmdir
utility tries to remove it.
OPTIONS
The
rmdir
utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1-2017,
Section 12.2,
Utility Syntax Guidelines.
The following option shall be supported:
- -p
-
Remove all directories in a pathname. For each
dir
operand:
-
- 1.
-
The directory entry it names shall be removed.
- 2.
-
If the
dir
operand includes more than one pathname component, effects equivalent
to the following command shall occur:
-
-
rmdir -p $(dirname dir)
OPERANDS
The following operand shall be supported:
- dir
-
A pathname of an empty directory to be removed.
STDIN
Not used.
INPUT FILES
None.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of
rmdir:
- LANG
-
Provide a default value for the internationalization variables that are
unset or null. (See the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1-2017,
Section 8.2, Internationalization Variables
for the precedence of internationalization variables used to determine
the values of locale categories.)
- LC_ALL
-
If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the
other internationalization variables.
- LC_CTYPE
-
Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of
text data as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed to
multi-byte characters in arguments).
- LC_MESSAGES
-
Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format and
contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error.
- NLSPATH
-
Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing of
LC_MESSAGES.
ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
Default.
STDOUT
Not used.
STDERR
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.
OUTPUT FILES
None.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
None.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values shall be returned:
- 0
-
Each directory entry specified by a
dir
operand was removed successfully.
- >0
-
An error occurred.
CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
Default.
The following sections are informative.
APPLICATION USAGE
The definition of an empty directory is one that contains, at most,
directory entries for dot and dot-dot.
EXAMPLES
If a directory
a
in the current directory is empty except it contains a directory
b
and
a/b
is empty except it contains a directory
c:
-
rmdir -p a/b/c
removes all three directories.
RATIONALE
On historical System V systems, the
-p
option also caused a message to be written to the standard output. The
message indicated whether the whole path was removed or whether part of
the path remained for some reason. The STDERR section requires this
diagnostic when the entire path specified by a
dir
operand is not removed, but does not allow the status message reporting
success to be written as a diagnostic.
The
rmdir
utility on System V also included a
-s
option that suppressed the informational message output by the
-p
option. This option has been omitted because the informational message
is not specified by this volume of POSIX.1-2017.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.
SEE ALSO
rm
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1-2017,
Chapter 8, Environment Variables,
Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines
The System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1-2017,
remove(),
rmdir(),
unlink()
COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information Technology
-- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base
Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition,
Copyright (C) 2018 by the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group.
In the event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and
The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard
is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online at
http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .
Any typographical or formatting errors that appear
in this page are most likely
to have been introduced during the conversion of the source files to
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https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .