• NAME
  
  rmdir - delete a directory
• SYNOPSIS
  
  #include <unistd.h>
  
  int rmdir(const char * pathname );
• DESCRIPTION
  
  rmdir () deletes a directory, which must be empty.
• RETURN VALUE
  
  On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately.
• ERRORS
  

  EACCES

  Write access to the directory containing pathname was not allowed, or one of the directories in the path prefix of pathname did not allow search permission. (See also path_resolution(7) .

  EBUSY

  pathname is currently in use by the system or some process that prevents its removal. On Linux this means pathname is currently used as a mount point or is the root directory of the calling process.

  EFAULT

  pathname " points outside your accessible address space."

  EINVAL

  pathname has . as last component.

  ELOOP

  Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving pathname .

  ENAMETOOLONG

  pathname " was too long."

  ENOENT

  A directory component in pathname does not exist or is a dangling symbolic link.

  ENOMEM

  Insufficient kernel memory was available.

  ENOTDIR

  pathname , or a component used as a directory in pathname , is not, in fact, a directory.

  ENOTEMPTY

  pathname contains entries other than . " and " .. " ;" or, pathname has .. as its final component. POSIX.1-2001 also allows EEXIST for this condition.

  EPERM

  The directory containing pathname has the sticky bit set and the process's effective user ID is neither the user ID of the file to be deleted nor that of the directory containing it, and the process is not privileged (Linux: does not have the CAP_FOWNER capability).

  EPERM

  The file system containing pathname does not support the removal of directories.

  EROFS

  pathname refers to a directory on a read-only file system.

• CONFORMING TO
  
  SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.
• BUGS
  
  Infelicities in the protocol underlying NFS can cause the unexpected disappearance of directories which are still being used.
• SEE ALSO
  
  rm(1) , rmdir(1) , chdir(2) , chmod(2) , mkdir(2) , rename(2) , unlink(2) , unlinkat(2)
• COLOPHON
  
  This page is part of release 3.19 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

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