bug#10802: rmdir -p behaviour

[Jim Meyering]

Paul Eggert wrote:

> On 02/14/2012 07:53 AM, Jim Meyering wrote:
>> we'd have to defer removing a/ until the last argument,
>> and to know that we need to handle this unusual case, we'd have to
>> inspect each of the intervening arguments.
>
> There's a better way.  Put all the "I can't remove a
> parent directory" diagnostics into a data structure rather than
> issuing them immediately.  Then, at the end of the "rm", check
> whether the directories still exist.  Output the diagnostics
> only for directories that still exist.
>
> This still requires RAM, but only for the unusual case where
> the rmdirs fail.
>
> Still not sure it's worth it, though....

I should have asked up front,

Have you considered the --ignore-fail-on-non-empty option?

      --ignore-fail-on-non-empty
                  ignore each failure that is solely because a directory
                    is non-empty