NAME
rmdir —
remove a directory file
LIBRARY
Standard C Library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
int
rmdir(
const char
*path);
DESCRIPTION
rmdir() removes a directory file whose name is given by
path. The directory must not have any entries other than
‘
.
’ and
‘
..
’.
RETURN VALUES
Upon successful completion, the value 0 is returned; otherwise the
value -1 is returned and the global variable
errno
is set to indicate the error.
ERRORS
The named file is removed unless:
-
-
- [
EACCES
]
- Search permission is denied for a component of the path
prefix, or write permission is denied on the directory containing the link
to be removed.
-
-
- [
EBUSY
]
- The directory to be removed is the mount point for a
mounted file system.
-
-
- [
EFAULT
]
- path points outside the process's
allocated address space.
-
-
- [
EINVAL
]
- The last component of the path is
‘
.
’.
-
-
- [
EIO
]
- An I/O error occurred while deleting the directory entry or
deallocating the inode.
-
-
- [
ELOOP
]
- Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the
pathname.
-
-
- [
ENAMETOOLONG
]
- A component of a pathname exceeded
{
NAME_MAX
} characters, or an entire path name
exceeded {PATH_MAX
} characters.
-
-
- [
ENOENT
]
- The named directory does not exist.
-
-
- [
ENOTDIR
]
- A component of the path is not a directory.
-
-
- [
ENOTEMPTY
]
- The named directory contains files other than
‘
.
’ and
‘..
’ in it.
-
-
- [
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.
-
-
- [
EROFS
]
- The directory entry to be removed resides on a read-only
file system.
SEE ALSO
mkdir(2),
unlink(2)
STANDARDS
The
rmdir() function conforms to
IEEE Std
1003.1-1990 (“POSIX.1”).
HISTORY
The
rmdir() function call appeared in
4.2BSD.