rmdir - Removes a directory
rmdir [-p] directory...
Interfaces documented on this reference page conform to
industry standards as follows:
rmdir: XCU5.0
Refer to the standards(5) reference page for more information
about industry standards and associated tags.
Removes all directories in a path name. For each directory
argument, the directory entry it names is removed.
If the directory argument includes more than one
path name component, effects equivalent to the following
command occur: rmdir -p $(dirname directory)
That is, rmdir recursively removes each directory
in the path name.
The path name of an empty directory to be removed.
The rmdir command removes a directory from the system.
The directory must be empty before you can remove it, and
you must have write permission in its parent directory.
Use the ls -al command to see if a directory is empty.
If a directory and a subdirectory of that directory are
specified in a single invocation of rmdir, the subdirectory
must be specified before the parent directory so that
the parent directory will be empty when rmdir tries to
remove it.
A directory must be empty before you can remove it, and
you must have write permission in its parent directory.
If the -p option is used, all directories in the path must
be empty except for the directory being recursively
removed.
The following exit values are returned: Each directory
specified by directory operand was successfully removed.
An error occurred.
To empty and remove a directory, enter: rm mydir/*
mydir/.* rmdir mydir
This removes the contents of mydir, then removes
the empty directory. The rm command displays an
error message about trying to remove the directories
. (dot) and .. (dot dot), and then rmdir
removes them.
Note that rm mydir/* mydir/.* first removes files
with names that do not begin with a (dot), then
those with names that do begin with a (dot). You
may not realize that the directory contains file
names that begin with a (dot) because the ls command
does not normally list them unless you use the
-a option to see the files whose names begin with a
(dot). To remove all of the directories in the
path name a/b/c, enter: rmdir -p a/b/c
Use a command like this one if directory a in the
current directory is empty except that it contains
a directory b and a/b is empty except that it contains
a directory c.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES [Toc] [Back] The following environment variables affect the execution
of rmdir: Provides a default value for the internationalization
variables that are unset or null. If LANG is unset
or null, the corresponding value from the default locale
is used. If any of the internationalization variables contain
an invalid setting, the utility behaves as if none of
the variables had been defined. If set to a non-empty
string value, overrides the values of all the other internationalization
variables. Determines the locale for the
interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters
(for example, single-byte as opposed to multibyte
characters in arguments). Determines the locale for the
format and contents of diagnostic messages written to
standard error. Determines the location of message catalogues
for the processing of LC_MESSAGES.
Commands: mkdir(1), ls(1), rm(1)
Functions: rmdir(2), unlink(2), remove(3)
Standards: standards(5)
rmdir(1)
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