NAME

rmdir − remove a directory file

SYNTAX

rmdir(path)
char *path;

DESCRIPTION

The rmdir system call removes a directory file whose name is given by path.  The directory must not have any entries other than “.” and “..”. 

RETURN VALUE

A 0 is returned if the remove succeeds; otherwise a −1 is returned and an error code is stored in the global location errno.

DIAGNOSTICS

The named file is removed unless one or more of the following are true:

[ENOTEMPTY]
The named directory contains files other than “.” and “..” in it.

[EPERM] 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. 

[ENOTDIR] A component of the path is not a directory. 

[ENOENT] The named directory does not exist. 

[EACCES] Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix. 

[EACCES] Write permission is denied on the directory containing the link to be removed. 

[EBUSY] The directory to be removed is the mount point for a mounted file system. 

[EROFS] The directory entry to be removed resides on a read-only file system. 

[EFAULT] The path points outside the process’s allocated address space. 

[ELOOP] Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname. 

[ENAMETOOLONG]
A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, or an entire pathname exceeded 1023 characters.

[EIO] An I/O error occurred while deleting the directory entry or deallocating the inode. 

[ETIMEDOUT] A "connect" request or remote file operation failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time which is dependent on the communications protocol. 

SEE ALSO

mkdir(2), unlink(2)

System Calls