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.TH RMDIR "3P" 2013 "IEEE/The Open Group" "POSIX Programmer's Manual"

.SH PROLOG

This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.

The Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult

the corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior),

or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

.SH NAME

rmdir

\(em remove a directory

.SH SYNOPSIS

.LP

.nf

#include <unistd.h>

.P

int rmdir(const char *\fIpath\fP);

.fi

.SH DESCRIPTION

The

\fIrmdir\fR()

function shall remove a directory whose name is given by

.IR path .

The directory shall be removed only if it is an empty directory.

.P

If the directory is the root directory or the current working directory

of any process, it is unspecified whether the function succeeds, or

whether it shall fail and set

.IR errno

to

.BR [EBUSY] .

.P

If

.IR path

names a symbolic link, then

\fIrmdir\fR()

shall fail and set

.IR errno

to

.BR [ENOTDIR] .

.P

If the

.IR path

argument refers to a path whose final component is either dot or

dot-dot,

\fIrmdir\fR()

shall fail.

.P

If the directory's link count becomes 0 and no process has the

directory open, the space occupied by the directory shall be freed and

the directory shall no longer be accessible. If one or more processes

have the directory open when the last link is removed, the dot and

dot-dot entries, if present, shall be removed before

\fIrmdir\fR()

returns and no new entries may be created in the directory, but the

directory shall not be removed until all references to the directory

are closed.

.P

If the directory is not an empty directory,

\fIrmdir\fR()

shall fail and set

.IR errno

to

.BR [EEXIST] 

or

.BR [ENOTEMPTY] .

.P

Upon successful completion,

\fIrmdir\fR()

shall mark for update the last data modification and last file status

change timestamps of the parent directory.

.SH "RETURN VALUE"

Upon successful completion, the function

\fIrmdir\fR()

shall return 0. Otherwise, \(mi1 shall be returned, and

.IR errno

set to indicate the error. If \(mi1 is returned, the named

directory shall not be changed.

.SH ERRORS

The

\fIrmdir\fR()

function shall fail if:

.TP

.BR EACCES

Search permission is denied on a component of the path prefix, or write

permission is denied on the parent directory of the directory to be

removed.

.TP

.BR EBUSY

The directory to be removed is currently in use by the system or

some process and the implementation considers this to be an error.

.IP "[EEXIST]\ or\ [ENOTEMPTY]" 12

.br

The

.IR path

argument names a directory that is not an empty directory, or there are

hard links to the directory other than dot or a single entry in

dot-dot.

.TP

.BR EINVAL

The

.IR path

argument contains a last component that is dot.

.TP

.BR EIO

A physical I/O error has occurred.

.TP

.BR ELOOP

A loop exists in symbolic links encountered during resolution of the

.IR path

argument.

.TP

.BR ENAMETOOLONG

.br

The length of a component of a pathname is longer than

{NAME_MAX}.

.TP

.BR ENOENT

A component of

.IR path

does not name an existing file, or the

.IR path

argument names a nonexistent directory or points to an empty string.

.TP

.BR ENOTDIR

A component of

.IR path

names an existing file that is neither a directory nor a symbolic link

to a directory.

.IP "[EPERM]\ or\ [EACCES]" 12

.br

The S_ISVTX flag is set on the directory containing the file referred

to by the

.IR path

argument and the process does not satisfy the criteria specified in the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1\(hy2008,

.IR "Section 4.2" ", " "Directory Protection".

.TP

.BR EROFS

The directory entry to be removed resides on a read-only file system.

.P

The

\fIrmdir\fR()

function may fail if:

.TP

.BR ELOOP

More than

{SYMLOOP_MAX}

symbolic links were encountered during resolution of the

.IR path

argument.

.TP

.BR ENAMETOOLONG

.br

The length of a pathname exceeds

{PATH_MAX},

or pathname resolution of a symbolic link produced an intermediate

result with a length that exceeds

{PATH_MAX}.

.LP

.IR "The following sections are informative."

.SH EXAMPLES

.SS "Removing a Directory"

.P

The following example shows how to remove a directory named

.BR /home/cnd/mod1 .

.sp

.RS 4

.nf

\fB

#include <unistd.h>

.P

int status;

\&...

status = rmdir("/home/cnd/mod1");

.fi \fR

.P

.RE

.SH "APPLICATION USAGE"

None.

.SH RATIONALE

The

\fIrmdir\fR()

and

\fIrename\fR()

functions originated in 4.2 BSD, and they used

.BR [ENOTEMPTY] 

for the condition when the directory to be removed does not exist or

.IR new

already exists. When the 1984 /usr/group standard was published, it contained

.BR [EEXIST] 

instead. When these functions were adopted into System V, the

1984 /usr/group standard was used as a reference. Therefore, several existing applications

and implementations support/use both forms, and no agreement could be

reached on either value. All implementations are required to supply

both

.BR [EEXIST] 

and

.BR [ENOTEMPTY] 

in

.IR <errno.h> 

with distinct values, so that applications can use both values in

C-language

.BR case

statements.

.P

The meaning of deleting

.IR pathname \c

.BR /dot

is unclear, because the name of the file (directory) in the parent

directory to be removed is not clear, particularly in the presence of

multiple links to a directory.

.P

The POSIX.1\(hy1990 standard was silent with regard to the behavior of

\fIrmdir\fR()

when there are multiple hard links to the directory being removed. The

requirement to set

.IR errno

to

.BR [EEXIST] 

or

.BR [ENOTEMPTY] 

clarifies the behavior in this case.

.P

If the current working directory of the process is being removed, that

should be an allowed error.

.P

Virtually all existing implementations detect

.BR [ENOTEMPTY] 

or the case of dot-dot. The text in

.IR "Section 2.3" ", " "Error Numbers"

about returning any one of the possible errors permits that behavior to

continue. The

.BR [ELOOP] 

error may be returned if more than

{SYMLOOP_MAX}

symbolic links are encountered during resolution of the

.IR path

argument.

.SH "FUTURE DIRECTIONS"

None.

.SH "SEE ALSO"

.IR "Section 2.3" ", " "Error Numbers",

.IR "\fImkdir\fR\^(\|)",

.IR "\fIremove\fR\^(\|)",

.IR "\fIrename\fR\^(\|)",

.IR "\fIunlink\fR\^(\|)"

.P

The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1\(hy2008,

.IR "Section 4.2" ", " "Directory Protection",

.IR "\fB<unistd.h>\fP"

.SH COPYRIGHT

Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form

from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information Technology

-- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base

Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the Institute of

Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group.

(This is POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1 applied.) In the

event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and

The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard

is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online at

http://www.unix.org/online.html .

Any typographical or formatting errors that appear

in this page are most likely

to have been introduced during the conversion of the source files to

man page format. To report such errors, see

https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .