rmdir(1p) — Linux manual page

RMDIR(1P)               POSIX Programmer's Manual              RMDIR(1P)

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(1p)

       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(3p),
       rmdir(3p), unlink(3p)

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 man page format. To report such errors, see
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .

IEEE/The Open Group               2017                         RMDIR(1P)

Pages that refer to this page: mkdir(1p), rm(1p)

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