rmdir when directory is not empty

John Kebbel kebbelj at scripting-solutions.com
Tue Dec 20 21:06:13 UTC 2005


My original posting for Re: rmdir when directory is not empty began...
"The man page for rmdir left more questions than it answered." I cropped
that line out of my email so I could get straight to the point. Now that
I know we have a vocal RTFM crowd here, I'll make sure I NEVER again
forget to mention I read the man first.

I ran man rmdir > rmdir.txt so I could paste it here to show you why the
man page left me puzzled. First, the only option that seems to address
the issue is the option --ignore-fail-on-non-empty, which I typed out in
full and also tried as just -i without results. (Maybe I typed it wrong
one or both times.) Anyway, it wasn't till I copied and pasted here that
I noticed that I have a truncated manual, that the full docs are in some
other file.



RMDIR(1)                         User Commands
RMDIR(1)



NAME
       rmdir - remove empty directories

SYNOPSIS
       rmdir [OPTION]... DIRECTORY...

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

       --ignore-fail-on-non-empty

              ignore  each  failure that is solely because a directory
is non-empty

       -p, --parents
              remove DIRECTORY, then try to remove each directory
component of that  path  name.   E.g.,  ‘rmdir -p a/b/c’ is similar to
‘rmdir
              a/b/c a/b a’.

       -v, --verbose
              output a diagnostic for every directory processed

       --help display this help and exit

       --version
              output version information and exit

AUTHOR
       Written by David MacKenzie.

REPORTING BUGS
       Report bugs to <bug-coreutils at gnu.org>.

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright © 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
       This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
There is
       NO  warranty;  not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR
       PURPOSE.

SEE ALSO
       The full documentation for rmdir is maintained as a Texinfo
manual.  If the  info  and  rmdir programs are properly installed at
your site, the  command info coreutils rmdir should give you access to
the complete manual.







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