Manual Pages  — RMDIR

rmdir – remove directories

SYNOPSIS DESCRIPTION EXIT STATUS EXAMPLES SEE ALSO STANDARDS HISTORY

rmdir [-pv] directory ...

The rmdir utility removes the directory entry specified by each directory argument, provided it is empty.

Arguments are processed in the order given. In order to remove both a parent directory and a subdirectory of that parent, the subdirectory must be specified first so the parent directory is empty when rmdir tries to remove it.

The following option is available:

-p
	Each directory argument is treated as a pathname of which all components will be removed, if they are empty, starting with the last most component. (See rm(1) for fully non-discriminant recursive removal.)
-v
	Be verbose, listing each directory as it is removed.

The rmdir utility exits with one of the following values:

0	Each directory entry specified by a directory operand referred to an empty directory and was removed successfully.
>0	An error occurred.

Remove the directory foobar, if it is empty:

    $ rmdir foobar

Remove all directories up to and including cow, stopping at the first non-empty directory (if any):

    $ rmdir -p cow/horse/monkey

The rmdir utility is expected to be IEEE Std 1003.2 ("POSIX.2") compatible.

A rmdir command appeared in AT&T v1 .