rmdir(2) — Linux manual page

rmdir(2)                   System Calls Manual                  rmdir(2)

NAME

       rmdir - delete a directory

LIBRARY

       Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

       #include <unistd.h>

       int rmdir(const char *pathname);

DESCRIPTION

       rmdir() deletes a directory, which must be empty.

RETURN VALUE

       On success, zero is returned.  On error, -1 is returned, and
       errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS

       EACCES Write access to the directory containing pathname was not
              allowed, or one of the directories in the path prefix of
              pathname did not allow search permission.  (See also
              path_resolution(7).)

       EBUSY  pathname is currently in use by the system or some process
              that prevents its removal.  On Linux, this means pathname
              is currently used as a mount point or is the root
              directory of the calling process.

       EFAULT pathname points outside your accessible address space.

       EINVAL pathname has .  as last component.

       ELOOP  Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving
              pathname.

       ENAMETOOLONG
              pathname was too long.

       ENOENT A directory component in pathname does not exist or is a
              dangling symbolic link.

       ENOMEM Insufficient kernel memory was available.

       ENOTDIR
              pathname, or a component used as a directory in pathname,
              is not, in fact, a directory.

       ENOTEMPTY
              pathname contains entries other than . and .. ; or,
              pathname has ..  as its final component.  POSIX.1 also
              allows EEXIST for this condition.

       EPERM  The directory containing pathname has the sticky bit
              (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 CAP_FOWNER
              capability).

       EPERM  The filesystem containing pathname does not support the
              removal of directories.

       EROFS  pathname refers to a directory on a read-only filesystem.

STANDARDS

       POSIX.1-2008.

HISTORY

       POSIX.1-2001, SVr4, 4.3BSD.

BUGS

       Infelicities in the protocol underlying NFS can cause the
       unexpected disappearance of directories which are still being
       used.

SEE ALSO

       rm(1), rmdir(1), chdir(2), chmod(2), mkdir(2), rename(2),
       unlink(2), unlinkat(2)

COLOPHON

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Linux man-pages 6.9.1          2024-05-02                       rmdir(2)

Pages that refer to this page: rmdir(1), fanotify_mark(2), fcntl(2), mkdir(2), syscalls(2), unlink(2), remove(3), cpuset(7), mount_namespaces(7), signal-safety(7), symlink(7), mount(8)

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