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RMDIR(2) System Calls Manual RMDIR(2)

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:
[]
A component of the path is not a directory.
[]
A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters.
[]
The named directory does not exist.
[]
Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
[]
The named directory contains files other than ‘.’ and ‘..’ in it.
[]
Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix.
[]
Write permission is denied on the directory containing the link to be removed.
[]
The directory to be removed has its immutable, undeletable or append-only flag set, see the chflags(2) manual page for more information.
[]
The parent directory of the directory to be removed has its immutable or append-only flag set.
[]
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.
[]
The last component of the path is ‘.’ or ‘..’.
[]
The directory to be removed is the mount point for a mounted file system.
[]
An I/O error occurred while deleting the directory entry or deallocating the inode.
[]
The directory entry to be removed resides on a read-only file system.
[]
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.
December 9, 2006 Linux 4.19.0-10-amd64