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In the event of any discrepancy 20.\" between these versions and the original IEEE and The Open Group 21.\" Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee 22.\" document. The original Standard can be obtained online at 23.\" http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html. 24.\" 25.\" This notice shall appear on any product containing this material. 26.\" 27.\" The contents of this file are subject to the terms of the 28.\" Common Development and Distribution License (the "License"). 29.\" You may not use this file except in compliance with the License. 30.\" 31.\" You can obtain a copy of the license at usr/src/OPENSOLARIS.LICENSE 32.\" or http://www.opensolaris.org/os/licensing. 33.\" See the License for the specific language governing permissions 34.\" and limitations under the License. 35.\" 36.\" When distributing Covered Code, include this CDDL HEADER in each 37.\" file and include the License file at usr/src/OPENSOLARIS.LICENSE. 38.\" If applicable, add the following below this CDDL HEADER, with the 39.\" fields enclosed by brackets "[]" replaced with your own identifying 40.\" information: Portions Copyright [yyyy] [name of copyright owner] 41.\" 42.\" 43.\" Copyright 1989 AT&T 44.\" Portions Copyright (c) 1992, X/Open Company Limited All Rights Reserved 45.\" Portions Copyright (c) 1982-2007 AT&T Knowledge Ventures 46.\" Copyright (c) 2007, Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved 47.\" 48.Dd March 28, 2026 49.Dt RMDIR 1 50.Os 51.Sh NAME 52.Nm rmdir 53.Nd remove directories 54.Sh SYNOPSIS 55.Nm /usr/bin/rmdir 56.Op Fl ps 57.Ar dirname 58.Ss "ksh93" 59.Nm /usr/bin/rmdir 60.Op Fl eps 61.Ar dirname ... 62.Sh DESCRIPTION 63The 64.Nm 65utility removes the directory entry specified by each 66.Ar dirname 67operand, which must refer to an empty directory. 68.Pp 69Directories are processed in the order specified. 70If a directory and a subdirectory of that directory are specified in a single 71invocation of 72.Nm rmdir , 73the subdirectory must be specified before the parent directory so that the 74parent directory is empty when 75.Nm rmdir 76tries to remove it. 77.Ss "ksh93" 78The 79.Nm rmdir 80built-in in 81.Nm ksh93 82is associated with the 83.Pa /bin 84and 85.Pa /usr/bin 86paths. 87It is invoked when 88.Nm rmdir 89is executed without a pathname prefix and the pathname search finds a 90.Pa /bin/rmdir 91or 92.Pa /usr/bin/rmdir 93executable. 94.Sh OPTIONS 95The following options are supported for both 96.Nm /usr/bin/rmdir 97and 98.Nm ksh93 rmdir : 99.Bl -tag -width Fl 100.It Fl p 101Allows users to remove the directory 102.Ar dirname 103and its parent directories which become empty. 104A message is printed to standard error if all or part of the path could not be 105removed. 106.It Fl s 107Suppresses the message printed on the standard error when 108.Fl p 109is in effect. 110.El 111.Ss "ksh93" 112The following options are supported for the 113.Nm rmdir 114built-in for 115.Nm ksh93 : 116.Bl -tag -width Fl 117.It Fl e , Fl -ignore-fail-on-non-empty 118Ignore each non-empty directory failure. 119.It Fl -parents 120Long option for 121.Fl p . 122.It Fl -suppress 123Long option for 124.Fl s . 125.El 126.Sh OPERANDS 127The following operands are supported: 128.Bl -tag -width Ar 129.It Ar dirname 130Specifies the pathname of an empty directory to be removed. 131.El 132.Sh USAGE 133See 134.Xr largefile 7 135for the description of the behavior of 136.Nm rmdir 137when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte (2^31 bytes). 138.Sh EXIT STATUS 139The following exit values are returned: 140.Bl -tag -width Sy 141.It Sy 0 142All the existing named directory entries were removed. 143.It Sy >0 144An error occurred. 145.El 146.Sh EXAMPLES 147.Sy Example 1 No Removing Empty Directories 148.Pp 149If a directory 150.Pa a 151in the current directory is empty, except that it contains a directory 152.Pa b , 153and 154.Pa a/b 155is empty except that it contains a directory 156.Pa c , 157the following command removes all three directories: 158.Pp 159.Dl example% rmdir -p a/b/c 160.Sh INTERFACE STABILITY 161.Sy Committed 162.Pp 163.Nm ksh93 164built-in binding to 165.Pa /bin 166and 167.Pa /usr/bin 168is Volatile. 169The built-in interfaces are Uncommitted. 170.Sh SEE ALSO 171.Xr ksh93 1 , 172.Xr rm 1 , 173.Xr unlink 2 , 174.Xr attributes 7 , 175.Xr largefile 7 , 176.Xr standards 7 177