NAME

       rmdir — remove a directory file

LIBRARY

       Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

       #include <unistd.h>

       int
       rmdir(const char *path);

DESCRIPTION

       The  rmdir()  system  call  removes a directory file whose name is given by path.  The directory must not
       have any entries other than ‘.’ and ‘..’.

RETURN VALUES

       The rmdir() function returns the value 0 if successful; otherwise the value -1 is returned and the global
       variable errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS

       The named file is removed unless:

       [ENOTDIR]          A component of the path is not a directory.

       [ENAMETOOLONG]     A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, or an  entire  path  name  exceeded
                          1023 characters.

       [ENOENT]           The named directory does not exist.

       [ELOOP]            Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.

       [ENOTEMPTY]        The named directory contains files other than ‘.’ and ‘..’ in it.

       [EACCES]           Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix.

       [EACCES]           Write permission is denied on the directory containing the link to be removed.

       [EPERM]            The  directory  to  be removed has its immutable, undeletable or append-only flag set,
                          see the chflags(2) manual page for more information.

       [EPERM]            The parent directory of the directory to be removed has its immutable  or  append-only
                          flag set.

       [EPERM]            The directory containing the directory to be removed is marked sticky, and neither the
                          containing  directory  nor the directory to be removed are owned by the effective user
                          ID.

       [EINVAL]           The last component of the path is ‘.’ or ‘..’.

       [EBUSY]            The directory to be removed is the mount point for a mounted file system.

       [EIO]              An I/O error occurred while deleting the directory entry or deallocating the inode.

       [EROFS]            The directory entry to be removed resides on a read-only file system.

       [EFAULT]           The path argument points outside the process's allocated address space.

SEE ALSO

       mkdir(2), unlink(2)

HISTORY

       The rmdir() system call appeared in 4.2BSD.

Debian                                          December 9, 2006                                        RMDIR(2)