Intro To 'rmdir' Command In Linux

2023-06-04 - By Robert Elder

     I use the 'rmdir' command to delete empty directories:

rmdir empty-folder

The 'rmdir' Command Only Deletes Empty Directories

     Here, I have a directory that contains only one file:

ls -l stuff

-rw-rw-r-- 1 robert robert 0 Jun  1 11:31 cat.jpg

     If I try to delete this directory with the 'rmdir' command, it will produce an error message and refuse to delete the directory:

rmdir stuff

rmdir: failed to remove 'stuff': Directory not empty

     If I delete the file first so that the directory is empty:

rm stuff/cat.jpg

     the 'rmdir' command will delete the folder for me:

rmdir stuff

ls -l

total 0

The 'rmdir' Command Versus 'rm' Command

     Deleting a directory could also be done with the 'rm' command using the '-r' flag:

rm -r stuff

     However, the 'rmdir' command could be considered safer since it forces you to delete the contents of a folder before deleting the folder itself.

A Realistic Use Case Of The 'rmdir' Command

     Let's try to set up a realistic use case where the 'rmdir' command could actually be useful.  Let's assume that I start with the following set of files on a production server:

ls -l

drwxrwxr-x 2 robert robert 4096 Jun  1 11:56 production-data
drwxrwxr-x 2 robert robert 4096 Jun  1 11:56 production-data-test

find .

./production-data-test
./production-data
./production-data/all-customer-data.sql

     In this scenario, my goal is to delete the unused test folder 'production-data-test' that was created for testing on a copy of the production database.  In a hurry, I type 'rm -r prod' and then use tab to auto-complete the folder name, expecting it to expand to the full 'production-data-test', but instead it only expands to 'production-data' because of the folder name ambiguity:

rm -r production-data

     Without double checking, I run the above command and now the production database is gone forever.

     If I had instead used the 'rmdir' command I would have gotten an error message instead:

rmdir production-data

rmdir: failed to remove 'production-data': Directory not empty

     and then I would have known to run this instead:

rmdir production-data-test

     And that's why the 'rmdir' command is my favourite Linux command.