rmdir(1)rmdir(1)NAMErmdir - Removes a directory
SYNOPSISrmdir [-p] directory...
STANDARDS
Interfaces documented on this reference page conform to industry stan‐
dards as follows:
rmdir: XCU5.0
Refer to the standards(5) reference page for more information about
industry standards and associated tags.
OPTIONS
Removes all directories in a path name. For each directory argument,
the directory entry it names is removed.
If the directory argument includes more than one path name com‐
ponent, effects equivalent to the following command occur: rmdir-p $(dirname directory)
That is, rmdir recursively removes each directory in the path
name.
OPERANDS
The path name of an empty directory to be removed.
DESCRIPTION
The rmdir command removes a directory from the system. The directory
must be empty before you can remove it, and you must have write permis‐
sion in its parent directory. Use the ls -al command to see if a
directory is empty.
If a directory and a subdirectory of that directory are specified in a
single invocation of rmdir, the subdirectory must be specified before
the parent directory so that the parent directory will be empty when
rmdir tries to remove it.
RESTRICTIONS
A directory must be empty before you can remove it, and you must have
write permission in its parent directory. If the -p option is used,
all directories in the path must be empty except for the directory
being recursively removed.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned: Each directory specified by
directory operand was successfully removed. An error occurred.
EXAMPLES
To empty and remove a directory, enter: rm mydir/* mydir/.* rmdir
mydir
This removes the contents of mydir, then removes the empty
directory. The rm command displays an error message about trying
to remove the directories . (dot) and .. (dot dot), and then
rmdir removes them.
Note that rm mydir/* mydir/.* first removes files with names
that do not begin with a (dot), then those with names that do
begin with a (dot). You may not realize that the directory con‐
tains file names that begin with a (dot) because the ls command
does not normally list them unless you use the -a option to see
the files whose names begin with a (dot). To remove all of the
directories in the path name a/b/c, enter: rmdir-p a/b/c
Use a command like this one if directory a in the current direc‐
tory is empty except that it contains a directory b and a/b is
empty except that it contains a directory c.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables affect the execution of rmdir: Pro‐
vides a default value for the internationalization variables that are
unset or null. If LANG is unset or null, the corresponding value from
the default locale is used. If any of the internationalization vari‐
ables contain an invalid setting, the utility behaves as if none of the
variables had been defined. If set to a non-empty string value, over‐
rides the values of all the other internationalization variables.
Determines 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). Determines the locale for the format
and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error. Deter‐
mines the location of message catalogues for the processing of LC_MES‐
SAGES.
SEE ALSO
Commands: mkdir(1), ls(1), rm(1)
Functions: rmdir(2), unlink(2), remove(3)
Standards: standards(5)rmdir(1)