rmdir when directory is not empty

[John Kebbel]

I assume OP stands for Original Poster (correct me if I'm wrong).
Anyway, I'm the Original Poster of "rmdir when directory is not empty"
I've gotten an incredible education from asking this question ...

1. man rmdir didn't answer my question because it was a truncated man
page, something I didn't even know existed
2. The full man page for rmdir wouldn't have solved my problem if I had
run it because most people suggested a solution using rm instead of
rmdir. The RTFM advice wouldn't have helped if I was reading the Wrong
FM.
3. RTFM advocates may have forgotten what it's like to be a newbie or a
newbie to some areas. I read man pages a lot, but a lot of what I read
makes no sense to me. That's why I go to discussion boards.
4. I asked my question assuming rmdir was half my solution. The
suggested solutions ...

     rm -fR directoryname

and

     # Delete the files.
     su - -c "find /path/to/dirName -type f -exec rm -f {} \;"

     # Delete the directory paths.
     su - -c "rmdir -p /path/to/dirName"

showed me I should stick to a more general description of my problem
(How do I delete non-empty directories?)