hpux man page for rmdir

rmdir(1)						      General Commands Manual							  rmdir(1)

NAME
       rmdir - remove directories

SYNOPSIS
       dir ...

DESCRIPTION
       removes the directory entry for each dir operand that refers to an empty directory.

       Directories  are  removed  in the order specified.  Consequently, if a directory and a subdirectory of that directory are both specified as
       arguments, the subdirectory must be specified before the parent directory so that the parent directory will be empty when tries	to  remove
       it.   Removal  of  a  directory requires write and search (execute) permission in its parent directory, but no permissions on the directory
       itself; but if the sticky bit is set on the parent directory, only the owner of the directory, the owner of the parent directory, or a user
       having appropriate privileges can remove the directory.

   Options
       recognizes the following options:

	      Force each directory to be removed without prompting for
		     confirmation,  regardless of the presence of the option.  This option also suppresses diagnostic messages regarding non-exis-
		     tent operands.

		     This option does not suppress any diagnostic messages other than those regarding  non-existent  operands.	 To  suppress  all
		     error message and interactive prompts, the option should be used while redirecting the standard error output to

		     This option ignores any previous occurrence of the option.

	      Write a prompt to the standard error output requesting confirmation
		     before removing each directory.

		     This option ignores any previous occurrence of the option.

	      Path removal.
		     If,  after  removing  a directory with more than one pathname component, the parent directory of that directory is now empty,
		     removes the empty parent directory.  This continues until encounters a non-empty parent directory, or until all components of
		     the original pathname have been removed.

		     When used in conjunction with the option, asks whether to remove each directory component of a path.

EXTERNAL INFLUENCES
   Environment Variables
       provides  a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. If is unset or null, the default value of "C" (see
       lang(5)) is used. If any of the internationalization variables contains an invalid setting, will  behave  as  if  all  internationalization
       variables are set to "C".  See environ(5).

       If set to a non-empty string value, overrides the values of all the other internationalization variables.

       determines  the	interpretation of dir names as single and/or multi-byte characters, the classification of characters as printable, and the
       characters matched by character class expressions in regular expressions.

       determines the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error  and  informa-
       tive messages written to standard output.

       determines the location of message catalogues for the processing of

   International Code Set Support
       Single- and multi-byte character code sets are supported.

DIAGNOSTICS
       Generally self-explanatory.  Note that the option does not suppress all diagnostic messages.

EXAMPLES
       To remove directories with a prompt for verification:

	      directories

       To remove as much as possible of a path, type:

SEE ALSO
       rm(1), rmdir(2), stat(2).

STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
       rmdir: SVID2, XPG2, XPG3, XPG4

																	  rmdir(1)