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RMDIR(2) System Calls Manual RMDIR(2)

rmdir — remove a directory file

#include <unistd.h>

int
rmdir(const char *path);

() removes a directory file whose name is given by path. The directory must not have any entries other than ‘.’ and ‘..’.

There is no () function; to remove a directory with a path relative to the directory associated with a file descriptor use the unlinkat(2) function with the AT_REMOVEDIR flag.

Upon successful completion, the value 0 is returned; otherwise the value -1 is returned and the global variable errno is set to indicate the error.

The named file is removed unless:

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A component of the path is not a directory.
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A component of a pathname exceeded NAME_MAX characters, or an entire pathname (including the terminating NUL) exceeded PATH_MAX bytes.
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The named directory does not exist.
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Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
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The named directory contains files other than ‘.’ and ‘..’ in it.
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Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix.
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Write permission is denied on the directory containing the directory to be removed.
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The directory containing the directory to be removed is marked sticky, and neither the containing directory nor the directory to be removed are owned by the effective user ID.
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The directory to be removed or the directory containing it has its immutable or append-only flag set (see chflags(2)).
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The directory to be removed is the mount point for a mounted file system.
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The last path element of the directory to be removed consists of ‘.’.
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An I/O error occurred while deleting the directory entry or deallocating the inode.
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The directory entry to be removed resides on a read-only file system.
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path points outside the process's allocated address space.

rmdir(1), chflags(2), mkdir(2), unlink(2)

The rmdir() function conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”).

The rmdir() function call appeared in 4.1cBSD.

February 18, 2022 openbsd