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Alphabetical listing for R

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rmdir(1)
NAME
  rmdir - Removes a directory

SYNOPSIS
  rmdir [-p] directory...

STANDARDS
  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.

OPTIONS
  -p  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.

OPERANDS
  directory
      The path name of an empty directory to be removed.

DESCRIPTION
  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.

RESTRICTIONS
   1.  A directory must be empty before you can remove it, and you must have
       write permission in its parent directory.

   2.  If the -p option is used, all directories in the path must be empty
       except for the directory being recursively removed.

EXIT STATUS
  The following exit values are returned:

  0   Each directory specified by directory operand was successfully removed.

  >0  An error occurred.

EXAMPLES
   1.  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).

   2.  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
  The following environment variables affect the execution of rmdir:

  LANG
      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.

  LC_ALL
      If set to a non-empty string value, overrides the values of all the
      other internationalization variables.

  LC_CTYPE
      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).

  LC_MESSAGES
      Determines the locale for the format and contents of diagnostic
      messages written to standard error.

  NLSPATH
      Determines the location of message catalogues for the processing of
      LC_MESSAGES.

SEE ALSO
  Commands:  mkdir(1), ls(1), rm(1)

  Functions:  rmdir(2), unlink(2), remove(3)

  Standards:  standards(5)

Index for Section 1

Alphabetical listing for R

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