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Name

rmdir - remove a directory

Synopsis

#include <unistd.h>

int rmdir(const char *path);

MT-Level

Async-Signal-Safe

Description

rmdir() removes the directory named by the path name pointed to by path. The directory must not have any entries other than ‘.’ and ‘..’.

If the directory’s link count becomes zero and no process has the directory open, the space occupied by the directory is freed and the directory is no longer accessible. If one or more processes have the directory open when the last link is removed, the ‘.’ and ‘..’ entries, if present, are removed before rmdir() returns and no new entries may be created in the directory, but the directory is not removed until all references to the directory have been closed.

Upon successful completion rmdir() marks for update the st_ctime and st_mtime fields of the parent directory.

Return Values

Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned. Otherwise, a value of -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.

Errors

The named directory is removed unless one or more of the following are true:

EACCES
Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix.
EACCES
Write permission is denied on the directory containing the directory to be removed.
EACCES
The parent directory has the S_ISVTX variable set and is not owned by the user; the directory is not owned by the user and is not writable by the user; the user is not a super-user.
EBUSY
The directory to be removed is the mount point for a mounted file system.
EEXIST
The directory contains entries other than those for ‘.’ and ‘..’.
EFAULT
path points to an illegal address.
EINVAL
The directory to be removed is the current directory.
EINVAL
The final component of path is ‘‘.’’.
EIO
An I/O error occurred while accessing the file system.
ELOOP
Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating path.
EMULTIHOP
Components of path require hopping to multiple remote machines and the file system does not allow it.
ENAMETOOLONG
The length of the path argument exceeds {PATH_MAX}, or the length of a path component exceeds {NAME_MAX} while {_POSIX_NO_TRUNC} is in effect.
ENOENT
The named directory does not exist or is the null pathname.
ENOLINK
path points to a remote machine, and the connection to that machine is no longer active.
ENOTDIR
A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
EROFS
The directory entry to be removed is part of a read-only file system.

See Also

mkdir(1) , rm(1) , mkdir(2)

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