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@xxxxxxx>.
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.
