rmdir(2) — Linux manual page

NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | STANDARDS | HISTORY | BUGS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

rmdir(2)                   System Calls Manual                  rmdir(2)

NAME         top

       rmdir - delete a directory

LIBRARY         top

       Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <unistd.h>

       int rmdir(const char *pathname);

DESCRIPTION         top

       rmdir() deletes a directory, which must be empty.

RETURN VALUE         top

       On success, zero is returned.  On error, -1 is returned, and
       errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS         top

       EACCES Write access to the directory containing pathname was not
              allowed, or one of the directories in the path prefix of
              pathname did not allow search permission.  (See also
              path_resolution(7).)

       EBUSY  pathname is currently in use by the system or some process
              that prevents its removal.  On Linux, this means pathname
              is currently used as a mount point or is the root
              directory of the calling process.

       EFAULT pathname points outside your accessible address space.

       EINVAL pathname has .  as last component.

       ELOOP  Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving
              pathname.

       ENAMETOOLONG
              pathname was too long.

       ENOENT A directory component in pathname does not exist or is a
              dangling symbolic link.

       ENOMEM Insufficient kernel memory was available.

       ENOTDIR
              pathname, or a component used as a directory in pathname,
              is not, in fact, a directory.

       ENOTEMPTY
              pathname contains entries other than . and .. ; or,
              pathname has ..  as its final component.  POSIX.1 also
              allows EEXIST for this condition.

       EPERM  The directory containing pathname has the sticky bit
              (S_ISVTX) set and the process's effective user ID is
              neither the user ID of the file to be deleted nor that of
              the directory containing it, and the process is not
              privileged (Linux: does not have the CAP_FOWNER
              capability).

       EPERM  The filesystem containing pathname does not support the
              removal of directories.

       EROFS  pathname refers to a directory on a read-only filesystem.

STANDARDS         top

       POSIX.1-2008.

HISTORY         top

       POSIX.1-2001, SVr4, 4.3BSD.

BUGS         top

       Infelicities in the protocol underlying NFS can cause the
       unexpected disappearance of directories which are still being
       used.

SEE ALSO         top

       rm(1), rmdir(1), chdir(2), chmod(2), mkdir(2), rename(2),
       unlink(2), unlinkat(2)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library
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Linux man-pages 6.9.1          2024-05-02                       rmdir(2)

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