RMDIR(2)

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 also allows EEXIST for this condition.

EPERM
    The directory containing pathname has the sticky bit (S_ISVTX) 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 filesystem containing pathname does not support the removal of directories.

EROFS
    pathname refers to a directory on a read-only filesystem.

CONFORMING TO
POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, SVr4, 4.3BSD.

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 4.12 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of this page, can be found at https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.