opensolaris man page for rmdir

rmdir(2)							   System Calls 							  rmdir(2)

NAME
       rmdir - remove a directory

SYNOPSIS
       #include <unistd.h>

       int rmdir(const char *path);

DESCRIPTION
       The  rmdir()  function  removes the directory named by the path name pointed to by path. The directory must not have any entries other than
       "." and "..".

       If the directory's link count becomes zero and no process has the directory open, the space occupied by the  directory  is  freed  and  the
       directory  is  no  longer  accessible.  If  one	or  more processes have the directory open when the last link is removed, the "." and ".."
       entries, if present, are removed before rmdir() returns and no new entries may be created in  the  directory,  but  the	directory  is  not
       removed until all references to the directory have been closed.

       Upon successful completion rmdir() marks for update the st_ctime and st_mtime fields of the parent directory.

RETURN VALUES
       Upon  successful  completion,  0 is returned. Otherwise, -1 is returned, errno is set to indicate the error, and the named directory is not
       changed.

ERRORS
       The rmdir() function will fail if:

       EACCES	       Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix and {PRIV_FILE_DAC_SEARCH} is not asserted in the  effective
		       set of the calling process

		       Write  permission  is  denied  on  the  directory  containing  the directory to be removed and {PRIV_FILE_DAC_WRITE} is not
		       asserted.

		       The parent directory has the S_ISVTX variable set, is not owned by the user, and {PRIV_FILE_OWNER} is not asserted.

		       The directory is not owned by the user and is not writable by the user.

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

       EEXIST	       The directory contains entries other than those for "." and "..".

       EFAULT	       The path argument points to an illegal address.

       EINVAL	       The directory to be removed is the current directory, or the final component of path is ".".

       EILSEQ	       The path argument includes non-UTF8 characters and the file system accepts only file names where all characters are part of
		       the UTF-8 character codeset.

       EIO	       An I/O error occurred while accessing the file system.

       ELOOP	       Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating path.

       ENAMETOOLONG    The  length of the path argument exceeds PATH_MAX, or the length of a path component exceeds NAME_MAX while _POSIX_NO_TRUNC
		       is in effect.

       ENOENT	       The named directory does not exist or is the null pathname.

       ENOLINK	       The path argument points to a remote machine, and the connection to that machine is no longer active.

       ENOTDIR	       A component of the path prefix is not a directory.

       EROFS	       The directory entry to be removed is part of a read-only file system.

ATTRIBUTES
       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     |	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Interface Stability	     |Standard			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |MT-Level		     |Async-Signal-Safe 	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

SEE ALSO
       mkdir(1), rm(1), mkdir(2), attributes(5), privileges(5), standards(5)

SunOS 5.11							    18 May 2007 							  rmdir(2)