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remove(3) Library Functions Manual remove(3) remove - remove a file or directory
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
#include <stdio.h> int remove(const char *path);
remove() deletes a name from the filesystem. It calls unlink(2) for files, and rmdir(2) for directories. If the removed name was the last link to a file and no processes have the file open, the file is deleted and the space it was using is made available for reuse. If the name was the last link to a file, but any processes still have the file open, the file will remain in existence until the last file descriptor referring to it is closed. If the name referred to a symbolic link, the link is removed. If the name referred to a socket, FIFO, or device, the name is removed, but processes which have the object open may continue to use it.
On success, zero is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set to indicate the error.
The errors that occur are those for unlink(2) and rmdir(2).
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7). ┌──────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┬─────────┐ │ Interface │ Attribute │ Value │ ├──────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┼─────────┤ │ remove() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe │ └──────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴─────────┘
C11, POSIX.1-2008.
POSIX.1-2001, C89, 4.3BSD.
Infelicities in the protocol underlying NFS can cause the unexpected disappearance of files which are still being used.
rm(1), unlink(1), link(2), mknod(2), open(2), rename(2), rmdir(2), unlink(2), mkfifo(3), symlink(7)
This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library user-space interface documentation) project. Information about the project can be found at ⟨https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/⟩. If you have a bug report for this manual page, see ⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/CONTRIBUTING⟩. This page was obtained from the tarball man-pages-6.15.tar.gz fetched from ⟨https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/⟩ on 2025-08-11. If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up- to-date source for the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org Linux man-pages 6.15 2025-05-17 remove(3) Pages that refer to this page: unlink(2), stdio(3), symlink(7)
| HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. | |