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rmdir(P) rmdir(P)
NAME
rmdir - remove directories
SYNOPSIS
rmdir [-p] dir...
DESCRIPTION
The rmdir utility shall remove the directory entry spec-
ified 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 IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 12.2, Utility
Syntax Guidelines.
The following option shall be supported:
-p Remove all directories in a pathname. For each
dir operand:
The directory entry it names shall be removed.
If the dir operand includes more than one pathname com-
ponent, 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 internationaliza-
tion variables that are unset or null. (See the
Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001,
Section 8.2, Internationalization Variables for
the precedence of internationalization variables
used to determine the values of locale cate-
gories.)
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 mes-
sages 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 con-
tains, 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
IEEE Std 1003.1-2001.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.
SEE ALSO
rm , the System Interfaces volume of
IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, remove(), rmdir(), unlink()
COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in
electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2003 Edition,
Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operat-
ing System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Speci-
fications Issue 6, Copyright (C) 2001-2003 by the Insti-
tute 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.open-
group.org/unix/online.html .
POSIX 2003 rmdir(P)
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