According to the susv2 man pages I have, remove(3) should act as

rmdir(2) on directories and unlink(2) otherwise. This modification,
and most of the man page update has been obtined from OpenBSD. This
was spotted by someone on a mailing lists a few months ago, but
I've lost their mail.

Reviewed by:	sheldonh

1 files changed, 8 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/lib/libc/stdio/remove.c b/lib/libc/stdio/remove.c
index cca7cb6..3518b68 100644
--- a/lib/libc/stdio/remove.c
+++ b/lib/libc/stdio/remove.c
@@ -42,6 +42,8 @@ static const char rcsid[] =
   "$FreeBSD$";
 #endif /* LIBC_SCCS and not lint */
 
+#include <sys/types.h>
+#include <sys/stat.h>
 #include <unistd.h>
 #include <stdio.h>
 
@@ -49,5 +51,11 @@ int
 remove(file)
 	const char *file;
 {
+	struct stat sb;
+
+	if (lstat(file, &sb) < 0)
+		return (-1);
+	if (S_ISDIR(sb.st_mode))
+		return (rmdir(file));
 	return (unlink(file));
 }