| NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | VERSIONS | CONFORMING TO | NOTES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON | The Linux Programming Interface |
UNLINKAT(2) Linux Programmer's Manual UNLINKAT(2)
unlinkat - remove a directory entry relative to a directory file descriptor
#include <fcntl.h>
int unlinkat(int dirfd, const char *pathname, int flags);
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):
unlinkat():
Since glibc 2.10:
_XOPEN_SOURCE >= 700 || _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200809L
Before glibc 2.10:
_ATFILE_SOURCE
The unlinkat() system call operates in exactly the same way as either
unlink(2) or rmdir(2) (depending on whether or not flags includes the
AT_REMOVEDIR flag) except for the differences described in this manual page.
If the pathname given in pathname is relative, then it is interpreted relative
to the directory referred to by the file descriptor dirfd (rather than
relative to the current working directory of the calling process, as is done
by unlink(2) and rmdir(2) for a relative pathname).
If the pathname given in pathname is relative and dirfd is the special value
AT_FDCWD, then pathname is interpreted relative to the current working
directory of the calling process (like unlink(2) and rmdir(2)).
If the pathname given in pathname is absolute, then dirfd is ignored.
flags is a bit mask that can either be specified as 0, or by ORing together
flag values that control the operation of unlinkat(). Currently only one such
flags is defined:
AT_REMOVEDIR
By default, unlinkat() performs the equivalent of unlink(2) on
pathname. If the AT_REMOVEDIR flag is specified, then performs the
equivalent of rmdir(2) on pathname.
On success, unlinkat() returns 0. On error, -1 is returned and errno is set
to indicate the error.
The same errors that occur for unlink(2) and rmdir(2) can also occur for
unlinkat(). The following additional errors can occur for unlinkat():
EBADF dirfd is not a valid file descriptor.
EINVAL An invalid flag value was specified in flags.
ENOTDIR
pathname is relative and dirfd is a file descriptor referring to a file
other than a directory.
unlinkat() was added to Linux in kernel 2.6.16.
POSIX.1-2008. A similar system call exists on Solaris.
See openat(2) for an explanation of the need for unlinkat().
openat(2), rmdir(2), unlink(2), path_resolution(7)
This page is part of release 3.32 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found
at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Linux 2009-12-13 UNLINKAT(2)
HTML rendering created 2010-12-03 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface