man/cat1p/rmdir.1p.txt
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rmdir(P) rmdir(P)
NAME rmdir - remove directories SYNOPSIS rmdir [-p] dir... DESCRIPTION The rmdir utility shall remove the directory entry spec- ified by each dir operand. For each dir operand, the rmdir utility shall perform actions equivalent to the rmdir() function called with the dir operand as its only argument. Directories shall be processed in the order specified. If a directory and a subdirectory of that directory are specified in a single invocation of the rmdir utility, the application shall specify the subdirectory before the parent directory so that the parent directory will be empty when the rmdir utility tries to remove it. OPTIONS The rmdir utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines. The following option shall be supported: -p Remove all directories in a pathname. For each dir operand: The directory entry it names shall be removed. If the dir operand includes more than one pathname com- ponent, effects equivalent to the following command shall occur: rmdir -p $(dirname dir) OPERANDS The following operand shall be supported: dir A pathname of an empty directory to be removed. STDIN Not used. INPUT FILES None. ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES The following environment variables shall affect the execution of rmdir: LANG Provide a default value for the internationaliza- tion variables that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 8.2, Internationalization Variables for the precedence of internationalization variables used to determine the values of locale cate- gories.) LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the other internationalization variables. LC_CTYPE Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed to multi- byte characters in arguments). LC_MESSAGES Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic mes- sages written to standard error. NLSPATH Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing of LC_MESSAGES . ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS Default. STDOUT Not used. STDERR The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages. OUTPUT FILES None. EXTENDED DESCRIPTION None. EXIT STATUS The following exit values shall be returned: 0 Each directory entry specified by a dir operand was removed successfully. >0 An error occurred. CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS Default. The following sections are informative. APPLICATION USAGE The definition of an empty directory is one that con- tains, at most, directory entries for dot and dot-dot. EXAMPLES If a directory a in the current directory is empty except it contains a directory b and a/b is empty except it contains a directory c: rmdir -p a/b/c removes all three directories. RATIONALE On historical System V systems, the -p option also caused a message to be written to the standard output. The message indicated whether the whole path was removed or whether part of the path remained for some reason. The STDERR section requires this diagnostic when the entire path specified by a dir operand is not removed, but does not allow the status message reporting success to be written as a diagnostic. The rmdir utility on System V also included a -s option that suppressed the informational message output by the -p option. This option has been omitted because the informational message is not specified by this volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001. FUTURE DIRECTIONS None. SEE ALSO rm , the System Interfaces volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, remove(), rmdir(), unlink() COPYRIGHT Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2003 Edition, Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operat- ing System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Speci- fications Issue 6, Copyright (C) 2001-2003 by the Insti- tute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online at http://www.open- group.org/unix/online.html . POSIX 2003 rmdir(P) |