RMDIR(2) BSD System Calls Manual RMDIR(2)NAMErmdir — 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 translat‐
ing 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.
[EROFS] The directory entry to be removed resides on a read-
only file system.
[EFAULT] The path argument points outside the process's allo‐
cated address space.
SEE ALSOmkdir(2), unlink(2)HISTORY
The rmdir() system call appeared in 4.2BSD.
BSD December 9, 2006 BSD
