rmdir [-p] dir...
The rmdir utility shall remove the directory entry specified 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.
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:
The directory entry it names shall be removed.
If the dir operand includes more than one pathname component, effects equivalent to the following command shall occur:
rmdir -p $(dirname dir)
The following operand shall be supported:
Not used.
None.
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of rmdir:
Default.
Not used.
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.
None.
None.
The following exit values shall be returned:
Default.
The following sections are informative.
The definition of an empty directory is one that contains, at most, directory entries for dot and dot-dot.
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.
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.
None.
rm , the System Interfaces volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, remove(), rmdir(), unlink()