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NAME

rmdir — remove a directory file

SYNOPSIS

#include <unistd.h>

int
rmdir(const char *path);

DESCRIPTION

rmdir() removes a directory file whose name is given by path. The directory must not have any entries other than ‘.’ and ‘..’.

There is no rmdirat() function; to remove a directory with a path relative to the directory associated with a file descriptor use the unlinkat(2) function with the AT_REMOVEDIR flag.

RETURN VALUES

Upon successful completion, the value 0 is returned; otherwise the value -1 is returned and the global variable errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS

The named file is removed unless:

[ENOTDIR]

A component of the path is not a directory.

[ENAMETOOLONG]

A component of a pathname exceeded NAME_MAX characters, or an entire pathname (including the terminating NUL) exceeded PATH_MAX bytes.

[ENOENT]

The named directory does not exist.

[ELOOP]

Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.

[ENOTEMPTY]

The named directory contains files other than ‘.’ and ‘..’ in it.

[EACCES]

Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix.

[EACCES]

Write permission is denied on the directory containing the directory to be removed.

[EPERM]

The directory containing the directory to be removed is marked sticky, and neither the containing directory nor the directory to be removed are owned by the effective user ID.

[EPERM]

The directory to be removed or the directory containing it has its immutable or append-only flag set (see chflags(2)).

[EBUSY]

The directory to be removed is the mount point for a mounted file system.

[EINVAL]

The last path element of the directory to be removed consists of ‘.’.

[EIO]

An I/O error occurred while deleting the directory entry or deallocating the inode.

[EROFS]

The directory entry to be removed resides on a read-only file system.

[EFAULT]

path points outside the process's allocated address space.

SEE ALSO

rmdir(1), chflags(2), mkdir(2), unlink(2)

STANDARDS

The rmdir() function conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”).

HISTORY

The rmdir() function call appeared in 4.1cBSD.