1 .\" This manpage is Copyright (C) 1992 Drew Eckhardt;
2 .\" and Copyright (C) 1993 Michael Haardt, Ian Jackson.
4 .\" %%%LICENSE_START(VERBATIM)
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10 .\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
11 .\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
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14 .\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this
15 .\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume no
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19 .\" which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working
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26 .\" Modified 1993-07-24 by Rik Faith <faith@cs.unc.edu>
27 .\" Modified 1997-01-31 by Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com>
28 .\" Modified 2004-06-23 by Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
30 .TH RMDIR 2 2008-05-08 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
32 rmdir \- delete a directory
34 .B #include <unistd.h>
36 .BI "int rmdir(const char *" pathname );
39 deletes a directory, which must be empty.
41 On success, zero is returned.
42 On error, \-1 is returned, and
48 Write access to the directory containing
50 was not allowed, or one of the directories in the path prefix of
52 did not allow search permission.
54 .BR path_resolution (7).
58 is currently in use by the system or some process that prevents its
62 is currently used as a mount point
63 or is the root directory of the calling process.
66 .IR pathname " points outside your accessible address space."
75 Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving
79 .IR pathname " was too long."
82 A directory component in
84 does not exist or is a dangling symbolic link.
87 Insufficient kernel memory was available.
91 or a component used as a directory in
93 is not, in fact, a directory.
97 contains entries other than
103 as its final component.
104 POSIX.1-2001 also allows
109 The directory containing
113 set and the process's effective user ID is neither the user ID
114 of the file to be deleted nor that of the directory containing it,
115 and the process is not privileged (Linux: does not have the
120 The filesystem containing
122 does not support the removal of directories.
126 refers to a directory on a read-only filesystem.
128 SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.
130 Infelicities in the protocol underlying NFS can cause the unexpected
131 disappearance of directories which are still being used.
142 This page is part of release 3.68 of the Linux
145 A description of the project,
146 information about reporting bugs,
147 and the latest version of this page,
149 \%http://www.kernel.org/doc/man\-pages/.