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.