rmdir.1 (2010 09)

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rmdir(1) rmdir(1)

NAME

rmdir - remove directories

SYNOPSIS

rmdir [-f|-i][-p

] dir ...

DESCRIPTION

rmdir 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

rmdir 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

rmdir recognizes the following options:

-f Force each directory to be removed without prompting for conﬁrmation, regardless of the pres-

ence of the -i option. This option also suppresses diagnostic messages regarding non-existent

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

-f option should be

used while redirecting the standard error output to /dev/null.

This option ignores any previous occurrence of the

-i option.

-i Write a prompt to the standard error output requesting conﬁrmation before removing each

directory.

This option ignores any previous occurrence of the

-f option.

-p Path removal. If, after removing a directory with more than one pathname component, the

parent directory of that directory is now empty, rmdir removes the empty parent directory.

This continues until rmdir encounters a non-empty parent directory, or until all components

of the original pathname have been removed.

When used in conjunction with the

-i option, rmdir asks whether to remove each directory

component of a path.

EXTERNAL INFLUENCES

Environment Variables

LANG provides a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. If

LANG is

unset or null, the default value of "C" (see lang (5)) is used. If any of the internationalization variables

contains an invalid setting,

rmdir will behave as if all internationalization variables are set to "C". See

environ (5).

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

ables.

LC_CTYPE 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 reg-

ular expressions.

LC_MESSAGES determines the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic

messages written to standard error and informative messages written to standard output.

NLSPATH determines the location of message catalogues for the processing of LC_MESSAGES.

International Code Set Support

Single- and multi-byte character code sets are supported.

DIAGNOSTICS

Generally self-explanatory. Note that the

-f option does not suppress all diagnostic messages.

HP-UX 11i Version 3: September 2010 − 1 − Hewlett-Packard Company 1

Summary of content (2 pages)

PAGE 1
rmdir(1) rmdir(1) NAME rmdir - remove directories SYNOPSIS rmdir [-f|-i] [-p] dir ... DESCRIPTION rmdir 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 rmdir tries to remove it.
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rmdir(1) rmdir(1) EXAMPLES To remove directories with a prompt for verification: rmdir -i directories To remove as much as possible of a path, type: rmdir -p component1 /component2 /dir SEE ALSO rm(1), rmdir(2), stat(2).