1RMDIR(1P) POSIX Programmer's Manual RMDIR(1P)
2
6 This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux
7 implementation of this interface may differ (consult the corresponding
8 Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may
9 not be implemented on Linux.
10
13 rmdir — remove directories
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16 rmdir [−p] dir...
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19 The rmdir utility shall remove the directory entry specified by each
20 dir operand.
21 For each dir operand, the rmdir utility shall perform actions equiva‐
23 lent to the rmdir() function called with the dir operand as its only
24 argument.
25 Directories shall be processed in the order specified. If a directory
27 and a subdirectory of that directory are specified in a single invoca‐
28 tion of the rmdir utility, the application shall specify the subdirec‐
29 tory before the parent directory so that the parent directory will be
30 empty when the rmdir utility tries to remove it.
31
33 The rmdir utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of
34 POSIX.1‐2008, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines.
35 The following option shall be supported:
37 −p Remove all directories in a pathname. For each dir operand:
39 1. The directory entry it names shall be removed.
41 2. If the dir operand includes more than one pathname compo‐
43 nent, effects equivalent to the following command shall
44 occur:
45 rmdir −p $(dirname dir)
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49 The following operand shall be supported:
50 dir A pathname of an empty directory to be removed.
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54 Not used.
55
57 None.
58
60 The following environment variables shall affect the execution of
61 rmdir:
62 LANG Provide a default value for the internationalization vari‐
64 ables that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions vol‐
65 ume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 8.2, Internationalization Vari‐
66 ables for the precedence of internationalization variables
67 used to determine the values of locale categories.)
68 LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of
70 all the other internationalization variables.
71 LC_CTYPE Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of
73 bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte as
74 opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments).
75 LC_MESSAGES
77 Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format
78 and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard
79 error.
80 NLSPATH Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing
82 of LC_MESSAGES.
83
85 Default.
86
88 Not used.
89
91 The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.
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94 None.
95
97 None.
98
100 The following exit values shall be returned:
101 0 Each directory entry specified by a dir operand was removed suc‐
103 cessfully.
104 >0 An error occurred.
106
108 Default.
109 The following sections are informative.
111
113 The definition of an empty directory is one that contains, at most,
114 directory entries for dot and dot-dot.
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117 If a directory a in the current directory is empty except it contains a
118 directory b and a/b is empty except it contains a directory c:
119 rmdir −p a/b/c
121 removes all three directories.
123
125 On historical System V systems, the −p option also caused a message to
126 be written to the standard output. The message indicated whether the
127 whole path was removed or whether part of the path remained for some
128 reason. The STDERR section requires this diagnostic when the entire
129 path specified by a dir operand is not removed, but does not allow the
130 status message reporting success to be written as a diagnostic.
131 The rmdir utility on System V also included a −s option that suppressed
133 the informational message output by the −p option. This option has been
134 omitted because the informational message is not specified by this vol‐
135 ume of POSIX.1‐2008.
136
138 None.
139
141 rm
142 The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter 8, Environment
144 Variables, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines
145 The System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1‐2008, remove(), rmdir(),
147 unlink()
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150 Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
151 from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information Technology
152 -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base
153 Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the Institute of Electri‐
154 cal and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. (This is
155 POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1 applied.) In the
156 event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and
157 The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard
158 is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online
159 at http://www.unix.org/online.html .
160 Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are
162 most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the source
163 files to man page format. To report such errors, see https://www.ker‐
164 nel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
165IEEE/The Open Group 2013 RMDIR(1P)