rmdir(1) [osf1 man page]

rmdir(1)						      General Commands Manual							  rmdir(1)

NAME

       rmdir - Removes a directory

SYNOPSIS

       rmdir [-p] [-s] directory...

STANDARDS

       Interfaces documented on this reference page conform to industry standards as follows:

       rmdir:  XCU5.0

       Refer to the standards(5) reference page for more information about industry standards and associated tags.

OPTIONS

       Removes all directories in a path name.	For each directory argument, the directory entry it names is removed.

	      If  the  directory  argument includes more than one path name component, effects equivalent to the following command occur: rmdir -p
	      $(dirname directory)

	      That is, rmdir recursively removes each directory in the path name.

OPERANDS

       The path name of an empty directory to be removed.

DESCRIPTION

       The rmdir command removes a directory from the system.  The directory must be empty before you can remove it, and you must have write  per-
       mission in its parent directory.  Use the ls -al command to see if a directory is empty.

       If  a  directory  and  a  subdirectory  of that directory are specified in a single invocation of rmdir, the subdirectory must be specified
       before the parent directory so that the parent directory will be empty when rmdir tries to remove it.

RESTRICTIONS

       A directory must be empty before you can remove it, and you must have write permission in its parent directory.	If the -p option is  used,
       all directories in the path must be empty except for the directory being recursively removed.

EXIT STATUS

       The following exit values are returned: Each directory specified by directory operand was successfully removed.	An error occurred.

EXAMPLES

       To empty and remove a directory, enter: rm mydir/* mydir/.*  rmdir mydir

	      This  removes  the  contents  of	mydir,	then removes the empty directory. The rm command displays an error message about trying to
	      remove the directories . (dot) and .. (dot dot), and then rmdir removes them.

	      Note that rm mydir/* mydir/.*  first removes files with names that do not begin with a (dot), then those with names  that  do  begin
	      with  a  (dot).	You may not realize that the directory contains file names that begin with a (dot) because the ls command does not
	      normally list them unless you use the -a option to see the files whose names begin with a (dot).	To remove all of  the  directories
	      in the path name a/b/c, enter: rmdir -p a/b/c

	      Use  a command like this one if directory a in the current directory is empty except that it contains a directory b and a/b is empty
	      except that it contains a directory c.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

       The following environment variables affect the execution of rmdir: Provides a default value for the internationalization variables that are
       unset or null. If LANG is unset or null, the corresponding value from the default locale is used.  If any of the internationalization vari-
       ables contain an invalid setting, the utility behaves as if none of the variables had been defined.  If set to a  non-empty  string  value,
       overrides  the  values of all the other internationalization variables.	Determines the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes
       of text data as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed to multibyte characters in arguments).  Determines the locale for the  for-
       mat  and  contents  of  diagnostic messages written to standard error.  Determines the location of message catalogues for the processing of
       LC_MESSAGES.

SEE ALSO

       Commands:  mkdir(1), ls(1), rm(1)

       Functions:  rmdir(2), unlink(2), remove(3)

       Standards:  standards(5)

																	  rmdir(1)