man2/rmdir.2

   1 .\" This manpage is Copyright (C) 1992 Drew Eckhardt;
   2 .\"             and Copyright (C) 1993 Michael Haardt, Ian Jackson.
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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>
  29 .\"
  30 .TH RMDIR 2 2015-08-08 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
  31 .SH NAME
  32 rmdir \- delete a directory
  33 .SH SYNOPSIS
  34 .B #include <unistd.h>
  35 .PP
  36 .BI "int rmdir(const char *" pathname );
  37 .SH DESCRIPTION
  38 .BR rmdir ()
  39 deletes a directory, which must be empty.
  40 .SH RETURN VALUE
  41 On success, zero is returned.
  42 On error, \-1 is returned, and
  43 .I errno
  44 is set appropriately.
  45 .SH ERRORS
  46 .TP
  47 .B EACCES
  48 Write access to the directory containing
  49 .I pathname
  50 was not allowed, or one of the directories in the path prefix of
  51 .I pathname
  52 did not allow search permission.
  53 (See also
  54 .BR path_resolution (7).
  55 .TP
  56 .B EBUSY
  57 .I pathname
  58 is currently in use by the system or some process that prevents its
  59 removal.
  60 On Linux, this means
  61 .I pathname
  62 is currently used as a mount point
  63 or is the root directory of the calling process.
  64 .TP
  65 .B EFAULT
  66 .IR pathname " points outside your accessible address space."
  67 .TP
  68 .B EINVAL
  69 .I pathname
  70 has
  71 .I .
  72 as last component.
  73 .TP
  74 .B ELOOP
  75 Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving
  76 .IR pathname .
  77 .TP
  78 .B ENAMETOOLONG
  79 .IR pathname " was too long."
  80 .TP
  81 .B ENOENT
  82 A directory component in
  83 .I pathname
  84 does not exist or is a dangling symbolic link.
  85 .TP
  86 .B ENOMEM
  87 Insufficient kernel memory was available.
  88 .TP
  89 .B ENOTDIR
  90 .IR pathname ,
  91 or a component used as a directory in
  92 .IR pathname ,
  93 is not, in fact, a directory.
  94 .TP
  95 .B ENOTEMPTY
  96 .I pathname
  97 contains entries other than
  98 .IR . " and " .. " ;"
  99 or,
 100 .I pathname
 101 has
 102 .I ..
 103 as its final component.
 104 POSIX.1 also allows
 105 .\" POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008
 106 .B EEXIST
 107 for this condition.
 108 .TP
 109 .B EPERM
 110 The directory containing
 111 .I pathname
 112 has the sticky bit
 113 .RB ( S_ISVTX )
 114 set and the process's effective user ID is neither the user ID
 115 of the file to be deleted nor that of the directory containing it,
 116 and the process is not privileged (Linux: does not have the
 117 .B CAP_FOWNER
 118 capability).
 119 .TP
 120 .B EPERM
 121 The filesystem containing
 122 .I pathname
 123 does not support the removal of directories.
 124 .TP
 125 .B EROFS
 126 .I pathname
 127 refers to a directory on a read-only filesystem.
 128 .SH CONFORMING TO
 129 POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, SVr4, 4.3BSD.
 130 .SH BUGS
 131 Infelicities in the protocol underlying NFS can cause the unexpected
 132 disappearance of directories which are still being used.
 133 .SH SEE ALSO
 134 .BR rm (1),
 135 .BR rmdir (1),
 136 .BR chdir (2),
 137 .BR chmod (2),
 138 .BR mkdir (2),
 139 .BR rename (2),
 140 .BR unlink (2),
 141 .BR unlinkat (2)