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 (con-
       sult 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 op-
       erand 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:

               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  IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 8.2, Internationalization Variables for the precedence of international-
              ization 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 stan-
              dard 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
       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 Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6, Copy-
       right (C) 2001-2003 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.open-
       group.org/unix/online.html .



IEEE/The Open Group                                           2003                                                     RMDIR(1P)