rmdir(2) — AIX PS/2 1.2.1



RMDIR(2,L)                  AIX Technical Reference                  RMDIR(2,L)



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
rmdir



PURPOSE

Removes a directory file.

SYNTAX

rmdir (path)
char *path;

DESCRIPTION

The rmdir system call removes the directory specified by the path parameter.
The directory you specify must be empty and you must have write access to it.

If the parent directory of path has the sticky attribute bit set, the calling
process must have an effective user ID equal to:

  o the owner ID of path, or to

  o the owner ID of the parent directory of path.

RETURN VALUE

Upon successful completion, the rmdir system call returns a value of 0.  If the
rmdir system call fails, a value of -1 is returned, and errno is set to
indicate the error.  It is an error to apply rmdir to a symbolic link.

ERROR CONDITIONS

The rmdir system call fails and the directory is not deleted if one or more of
the following are true:

EBUSY     The directory is in use as either the mount point for a file system
          or the current directory of the process that issued the rmdir.

EEXIST    The directory is not empty.

ENOTDIR   A component of the path is not a directory.

ENOENT    The named file does not exist.

EACCES    A component of the path denies search permission or write permission
          is denied on the directory containing the link to be removed.

EROFS     The named file resides on a read-only file system.





Processed November 7, 1990        RMDIR(2,L)                                  1



RMDIR(2,L)                  AIX Technical Reference                  RMDIR(2,L)



EFAULT    path points outside of the process's allocated address space.

ESTALE    The process's root or current directory is located in an NFS virtual
          file system that has been unmounted.

ENAMETOOLONG
          A component of the path parameter exceeded NAME_MAX characters or the
          entire path parameter exceeded PATH_MAX characters.

EISDIR    A hidden directory was named, components within hidden directories
          must be explicitly named.

ENOENT    A symbolic link was named in the path prefix, but the file to which
          it refers does not exist.

ELOOP     A loop of symbolic links was detected.

ENFILE    The system inode table is full.

EPERM     The file named by the path parameter is in a directory with the
          sticky attribute bit set, and the effective user ID of the calling
          process is not equal to the owner of the file or of the parent
          directory.

If the Transparent Computing Facility is installed on your system, rmdir can
also fail if one or more of the following are true:

ELOOP     An rmdir was attempted on a symbolic link in a system-type replicated
          file system.

ESITEDN1  path cannot be accessed because a site went down.

ESITEDN2  The operation was terminated because a site failed.

ENOSTORE  path is a name relative to the working directory, but no site which
          stores this directory is currently up.

ENOSTORE  A component of path is replicated but not stored on any site which is
          currently up.

EROFS     Write access is requested for a file on a replicated file system in
          which the primary copy is unavailable.

EINTR     A signal was caught during the system call.

RELATED INFORMATION

In this book:  "chmod, fchmod,"  "mkdir," "mknod, mknodx, mkfifo,"  "rename,"
and "umask."






Processed November 7, 1990        RMDIR(2,L)                                  2

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