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rmdir(2) System Calls Manual rmdir(2) NAME rmdir - Removes a directory file SYNOPSIS #include <unistd.h> int rmdir ( const char *path ); STANDARDS Interfaces documented on this reference page conform to industry stan- dards as follows: rmdir(): POSIX.1, XPG4, XPG4-UNIX Refer to the standards(5) reference page for more information about in- dustry standards and associated tags. PARAMETERS Specifies the directory pathname. The final component of the path pa- rameter cannot be a symbolic link. DESCRIPTION The rmdir() function removes the directory specified by the path para- meter. The directory is removed only if it is an empty directory. For the rmdir() function to execute successfully, the calling process must have write access to the parent directory of the path parameter with respect to all of the system's access control policies. If the directory's link count becomes 0 (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 . (dot) and .. (dot- dot) entries, if present, are removed before the rmdir() function re- turns, and no new entries may be created in the directory. However, the directory is not removed until all references to the directory have been closed. Upon successful completion, the rmdir() function marks the st_ctime and st_mtime fields of the parent directory for update. RETURN VALUES Upon successful completion, the rmdir() function returns a value of 0 (zero). If the rmdir() function fails, a value of -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error. ERRORS If the rmdir() function fails, the directory is not deleted and errno may be set to one of the following values: Search permission is denied on a component of the path parameter, or write permission is denied on the parent directory of the directory to be removed. The process does not have write access to the parent directory with respect to one of the system's access control policies. The directory is in use as ei- ther the mount point for a file system or the current directory of the process that issued the rmdir() function. The directory named by the path parameter is not empty. The path parameter is an invalid address. While reading from or writing to the file system, an I/O error oc- curred. Too many links were encountered in translating path. The length of the path parameter exceeds PATH_MAX, or a pathname component is longer than NAME_MAX. The directory named by the path parameter does not exist or is an empty string. A component of the path parame- ter is not a directory. The S_ISVTX flag is set on the parent direc- tory of the directory to be removed, and the caller is not the file owner. The directory named by the path parameter resides on a read- only file system. [Digital] For NFS file access, if the rmdir() function fails, errno may also be set to one of the following values: The file position pointer associated with the filedes parameter was negative. Indicates either that the system file table is full, or that there are too many files currently open in the system. Indicates a stale NFS file handle. An opened file was deleted by the server or another client; a client can- not open a file because the server has unmounted or unexported the re- mote directory; or the directory that contains an opened file was ei- ther unmounted or unexported by the server. RELATED INFORMATION Functions: chmod(2), mkdir(2), mknod(2), mkfifo(3), remove(3), re- name(2), umask(2), unlink(2) Standards: standards(5) delim off rmdir(2)