rmdir(C)

rmdir -- remove directories

Syntax

rmdir [ -p ] [ -s ] dirname ...

Description

The rmdir command removes the entries for one or more sub-directories from a directory. A directory must be empty before it can be removed. (Note that the rm -r dir command is a more dangerous alternative to rmdir.) If the parent directory has the ``sticky'' bit set, removal occurs only if one of the following is true:

the parent directory is owned by the user
the dirname directory is owned by the user
the dirname directory is writable to the user
the user is root

rmdir takes the following options:

-p: Recursively remove the directory dirname and those of its parent directories that become empty when a subdirectory is removed. (For example, if a series of empty nested directories exist, the -p option removes the deepest subdirectory and all its parent directories until a non-empty directory is reached.) A message is printed on the standard output if part of the path remains for some reason.
-s: Suppress any messages being printed when -p is in effect.

rmdir will refuse to remove the root directory of a mounted filesystem.

Exit values

rmdir returns an exit code of 0 if all the specified directories are removed successfully. Otherwise, it returns a non-zero exit code.

Examples

To remove the directory tmpdir from the current directory:

rmdir tmpdir

To remove the subdirectory dir3 and its parent directories dir2 and dir1 (where the parent directories contain no other files):

$ pwd
/u/homedir/dir1/dir2/dir3
$ cd ../../..
$ rmdir -p dir1/dir2/dir3
rmdir: dir1/dir2/dir3: Whole path removed.

Standards conformance

rmdir is conformant with:

ISO/IEC DIS 99452:1992, Information technology Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) Part 2: Shell and Utilities (IEEE Std 1003.21992);
AT&T SVID Issue 2;
X/Open CAE Specification, Commands and Utilities, Issue 4, 1992.

Notices

A version of rmdir that can handle files greater than 2GB is available in /u95/bin. See rmdir(1) for more information.