rmdir(1)

rmdir -- remove directories

Synopsis

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

Description

rmdir removes the entries for the named directories, which must not be empty.

rmdir has the following options:

-p: This option allows users to remove the directory dirname and its parent directories which become empty. A message is printed on standard error about whether the whole path is removed or part of the path remains for some reason.
-s: This option is used to suppress the message printed on standard error when -p is in effect. If the environment variable POSIX2 is set, this option is on by default (i.e., standard error messages are always suppressed).

Files

/usr/lib/locale/locale/LC_MESSAGES/uxcore.abi: language-specific message file (See LANG on environ(5).)

Exit codes

All messages are generally self-explanatory.

It is forbidden to remove the directories . and .. in order to avoid the consequences of inadvertently doing something like the following:

rm -r .*

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

References

rm(1), rmdir(2), unlink(2)

Notices

A -- permits the user to mark explicitly the end of any command line options, allowing rmdir to recognize filename arguments that begin with a -. As an aid to BSD migration, rmdir will accept - as a synonym for --. This migration aid may disappear in a future release. If a -- and a - both appear on the same command line, the second will be interpreted as a filename.

This command has been updated to handle files greater than 2GB.