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:
- [ENOTDIR]
-
A component of the path is not a directory.
- [ENAMETOOLONG]
-
A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters.
- [ENOENT]
-
The named directory does not exist.
- [ELOOP]
-
Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
- [ENOTEMPTY]
-
The named directory contains files other than ‘.’ and ‘..’ in it.
- [EACCES]
-
Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix.
- [EACCES]
-
Write permission is denied on the directory containing the link to be removed.
- [EPERM]
-
The directory to be removed has its immutable, undeletable or append-only flag set, see the chflags(2) manual page for more information.
- [EPERM]
-
The parent directory of the directory to be removed has its immutable or append-only flag set.
- [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.
- [EINVAL]
-
The last component of the path is ‘.’ or ‘..’.
- [EBUSY]
-
The directory to be removed is the mount point for a mounted file system.
- [EIO]
-
An I/O error occurred while deleting the directory entry or deallocating the inode.
- [EINTEGRITY]
-
Corrupted data was detected while reading from the file system.
- [EROFS]
-
The directory entry to be removed resides on a read-only file system.
- [EFAULT]
-
The path argument points outside the process's allocated address space.
SEE ALSO
HISTORY
The rmdir() system call appeared in 4.2BSD.