man7.org > Linux > man-pages

Linux/UNIX system programming training

rmdir(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | AUTHOR | REPORTING BUGS | COPYRIGHT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON 

RMDIR(1)                      User Commands                      RMDIR(1)

NAME         top

       rmdir - remove empty directories

SYNOPSIS         top

       rmdir [OPTION]... DIRECTORY...

DESCRIPTION         top

       Remove the DIRECTORY(ies), if they are empty.

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#rmdir--ignore-fail-on-non-empty\--ignore-fail-on-non-empty]8;;\
              ignore each failure to remove a non-empty directory

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#rmdir-p\-p, --parents]8;;\
              remove DIRECTORY and its ancestors; e.g., 'rmdir -p a/b' is
              similar to 'rmdir a/b a'

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#rmdir-v\-v, --verbose]8;;\
              output a diagnostic for every directory processed

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/rmdir#rmdir--help\--help]8;;\ display this help and exit

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/rmdir#rmdir--version\--version]8;;\
              output version information and exit

AUTHOR         top

       Written by David MacKenzie.

REPORTING BUGS         top

       Report bugs to: bug-coreutils@gnu.org
       GNU coreutils home page: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
       General help using GNU software: <https://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>
       Report any translation bugs to
       <https://translationproject.org/team/>

COPYRIGHT         top

       Copyright © 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc.  License GPLv3+:
       GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
       This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
       There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

SEE ALSO         top

       rmdir(2)

       Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/rmdir>
       or available locally via: info '(coreutils) rmdir invocation'

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the coreutils (basic file, shell and text
       manipulation utilities) project.  Information about the project
       can be found at ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩.  If you
       have a bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the tarball coreutils-9.11.tar.xz fetched from
       ⟨http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/⟩ on 2026-05-24.  If you
       discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page,
       or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the
       page, or you have corrections or improvements to the information
       in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page),
       send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

GNU coreutils 9.11              April 2026                       RMDIR(1)

Pages that refer to this page: rmdir(2),  cpuset(7)

HTML rendering created 2026-05-24 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface.

For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here.

Hosting by jambit GmbH.

Cover of TLPI