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



PROLOG
       This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The OS
       implementation of this interface may differ (consult the corresponding
       OS manual page for details of OS behavior), or the interface may not be
       implemented on OS.

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 aa in the current directory is empty except it contains a
       directory bb and a/b is empty except it contains a directory cc:


           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

       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(), rmdir(),
       unlink()

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(1)
