| .\" This manpage is Copyright (C) 1992 Drew Eckhardt; |
| .\" and Copyright (C) 1993 Michael Haardt, Ian Jackson. |
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| .\" Modified 1993-07-24 by Rik Faith <faith@cs.unc.edu> |
| .\" Modified 1997-01-31 by Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> |
| .\" Modified 2004-06-23 by Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com> |
| .\" |
| .TH RMDIR 2 2021-03-22 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual" |
| .SH NAME |
| rmdir \- delete a directory |
| .SH SYNOPSIS |
| .nf |
| .B #include <unistd.h> |
| .PP |
| .BI "int rmdir(const char *" pathname ); |
| .fi |
| .SH DESCRIPTION |
| .BR rmdir () |
| deletes a directory, which must be empty. |
| .SH RETURN VALUE |
| On success, zero is returned. |
| On error, \-1 is returned, and |
| .I errno |
| is set to indicate the error. |
| .SH ERRORS |
| .TP |
| .B EACCES |
| Write access to the directory containing |
| .I pathname |
| was not allowed, or one of the directories in the path prefix of |
| .I pathname |
| did not allow search permission. |
| (See also |
| .BR path_resolution (7). |
| .TP |
| .B EBUSY |
| .I pathname |
| is currently in use by the system or some process that prevents its |
| removal. |
| On Linux, this means |
| .I pathname |
| is currently used as a mount point |
| or is the root directory of the calling process. |
| .TP |
| .B EFAULT |
| .IR pathname " points outside your accessible address space." |
| .TP |
| .B EINVAL |
| .I pathname |
| has |
| .I . |
| as last component. |
| .TP |
| .B ELOOP |
| Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving |
| .IR pathname . |
| .TP |
| .B ENAMETOOLONG |
| .IR pathname " was too long." |
| .TP |
| .B ENOENT |
| A directory component in |
| .I pathname |
| does not exist or is a dangling symbolic link. |
| .TP |
| .B ENOMEM |
| Insufficient kernel memory was available. |
| .TP |
| .B ENOTDIR |
| .IR pathname , |
| or a component used as a directory in |
| .IR pathname , |
| is not, in fact, a directory. |
| .TP |
| .B ENOTEMPTY |
| .I pathname |
| contains entries other than |
| .IR . " and " .. " ;" |
| or, |
| .I pathname |
| has |
| .I .. |
| as its final component. |
| POSIX.1 also allows |
| .\" POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008 |
| .B EEXIST |
| for this condition. |
| .TP |
| .B EPERM |
| The directory containing |
| .I pathname |
| has the sticky bit |
| .RB ( S_ISVTX ) |
| set and the process's effective user ID is neither the user ID |
| of the file to be deleted nor that of the directory containing it, |
| and the process is not privileged (Linux: does not have the |
| .B CAP_FOWNER |
| capability). |
| .TP |
| .B EPERM |
| The filesystem containing |
| .I pathname |
| does not support the removal of directories. |
| .TP |
| .B EROFS |
| .I pathname |
| refers to a directory on a read-only filesystem. |
| .SH CONFORMING TO |
| POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, SVr4, 4.3BSD. |
| .SH BUGS |
| Infelicities in the protocol underlying NFS can cause the unexpected |
| disappearance of directories which are still being used. |
| .SH SEE ALSO |
| .BR rm (1), |
| .BR rmdir (1), |
| .BR chdir (2), |
| .BR chmod (2), |
| .BR mkdir (2), |
| .BR rename (2), |
| .BR unlink (2), |
| .BR unlinkat (2) |