HP-UX Reference (11i v2 07/12) - 1 User Commands N-Z (vol 2)

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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 direc-
tory.
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 regu-
lar 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.
224 Hewlett-Packard Company − 1 − HP-UX 11i Version 2: December 2007 Update