How to delete a file or folder

Question

How do I delete a file or folder in Python

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You can use the built-in pathlib module  requires Python 3 4   but there are backports for older versions on PyPI  pathlib  pathlib2     To remove a file there is the unlink method   import pathlib path   pathlib Path name of file  path unlink     Or the rmdir method to remove an empty folder   import pathlib path   pathlib Path name of folder  path rmdir

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For deleting files   os unlink path     dir fd None    or   os remove path     dir fd None    Both functions are semantically same  This functions removes  deletes  the file path  If path is not a file and it is directory  then exception is raised   For deleting folders   shutil rmtree path  ignore errors False  onerror None    or  os rmdir path     dir fd None    In order to remove whole directory trees  shutil rmtree   can be used  os rmdir only works when the directory is empty and exists   For deleting folders recursively towards parent   os removedirs name    It remove every empty parent directory with self until parent which has some content     ex  os removedirs  abc xyz pqr   will remove the directories by order  abc xyz pqr    abc xyz  and  abc  if they are empty     For more info check official doc  os unlink   os remove  os rmdir   shutil rmtree  os removedirs

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Python syntax to delete a file import os os remove  quot  tmp  lt file name gt  txt quot    Or import os os unlink  quot  tmp  lt file name gt  txt quot    Or pathlib Library for Python version  gt   3 4 file to rem   pathlib Path  quot  tmp  lt file name gt  txt quot   file to rem unlink    Path unlink missing ok False  Unlink method used to remove the file or the symbolik link   If missing ok is false  the default   FileNotFoundError is raised if the path does not exist  If missing ok is true  FileNotFoundError exceptions will be ignored  same behavior as the POSIX rm -f command   Changed in version 3 8  The missing ok parameter was added   Best practice  First  check whether the file or folder exists or not then only delete that file  This can be achieved in two ways   a  os path isfile  quot  path to file quot   b  Use exception handling   EXAMPLE for os path isfile    usr bin python import os myfile  quot  tmp foo txt quot      If file exists  delete it    if os path isfile myfile       os remove myfile  else        Show an error        print  quot Error   s file not found quot    myfile   Exception Handling    usr bin python import os     Get input    myfile  raw input  quot Enter file name to delete   quot       Try to delete the file    try      os remove myfile  except OSError as e      if failed  report it back to the user        print   quot Error   s -  s  quot     e filename  e strerror    RESPECTIVE OUTPUT  Enter file name to delete   demo txt Error  demo txt - No such file or directory   Enter file name to delete   rrr txt Error  rrr txt - Operation not permitted   Enter file name to delete   foo txt  Python syntax to delete a folder shutil rmtree    Example for shutil rmtree      usr bin python import os import sys import shutil    Get directory name mydir  raw input  quot Enter directory name   quot       Try to remove tree  if failed show an error using try   except on screen try      shutil rmtree mydir  except OSError as e      print   quot Error   s -  s  quot     e filename  e strerror

User · Answer

I recommend using subprocess if writing a beautiful and readable code is your cup of tea   import subprocess subprocess Popen  rm -r my dir   shell True    And if you are not a software engineer  then maybe consider using Jupyter  you can simply type bash commands    rm -r my dir   Traditionally  you use shutil   import shutil shutil rmtree my dir

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Here is a robust function that uses both os remove and shutil rmtree   def remove path           param  lt path gt  could either be relative or absolute          if os path isfile path  or os path islink path           os remove path     remove the file     elif os path isdir path           shutil rmtree path     remove dir and all contains     else          raise ValueError  file    is not a file or dir   format path

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import os  folder     Path to yourDir   fileList   os listdir folder   for f in fileList      filePath   folder       f      if os path isfile filePath           os remove filePath       elif os path isdir filePath           newFileList   os listdir filePath          for f1 in newFileList              insideFilePath   filePath         f1              if os path isfile insideFilePath                   os remove insideFilePath

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Use   shutil rmtree path   ignore errors   onerror       See complete documentation on shutil  and or  os remove   and  os rmdir    Complete documentation on os

User · Answer

os remove   removes a file  os rmdir   removes an empty directory  shutil rmtree   deletes a directory and all its contents      Path objects from the Python 3 4  pathlib module also expose these instance methods    pathlib Path unlink   removes a file or symbolic link  pathlib Path rmdir   removes an empty directory

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To remove all files in folder  import os import glob  files   glob glob os path join  path to folder      files   glob glob os path join  path to folder   csv       It will give all csv files in folder for file in files      os remove file    To remove all folders in a directory  from shutil import rmtree import os     os path join      current working directory   for dirct in os listdir os path join  path to folder         rmtree os path join  path to folder  dirct

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How do I delete a file or folder in Python    For Python 3  to remove the file and directory individually  use the unlink and rmdir Path object methods respectively   from pathlib import Path dir path   Path home      directory   file path   dir path    file   file path unlink     remove file  dir path rmdir       remove directory   Note that you can also use relative paths with Path objects  and you can check your current working directory with Path cwd   For removing individual files and directories in Python 2  see the section so labeled below   To remove a directory with contents  use shutil rmtree  and note that this is available in Python 2 and 3   from shutil import rmtree  rmtree dir path    Demonstration  New in Python 3 4 is the Path object    Let s use one to create a directory and file to demonstrate usage  Note that we use the   to join the parts of the path  this works around issues between operating systems and issues from using backslashes on Windows  where you d need to either double up your backslashes like    or use raw strings  like r foo bar     from pathlib import Path     home   is new in 3 5  otherwise use os path expanduser      directory path   Path home      directory  directory path mkdir    file path   directory path    file  file path touch     and now    gt  gt  gt  file path is file   True   Now let s delete them  First the file    gt  gt  gt  file path unlink         remove file  gt  gt  gt  file path is file   False  gt  gt  gt  file path exists   False   We can use globbing to remove multiple files - first let s create a few files for this    gt  gt  gt   directory path    foo my   touch    gt  gt  gt   directory path    bar my   touch     Then just iterate over the glob pattern    gt  gt  gt  for each file path in directory path glob    my            print f removing  each file path            each file path unlink        removing   directory foo my removing   directory bar my   Now  demonstrating removing the directory    gt  gt  gt  directory path rmdir     remove directory  gt  gt  gt  directory path is dir   False  gt  gt  gt  directory path exists   False   What if we want to remove a directory  and everything in it   For this use-case  use shutil rmtree  Let s recreate our directory and file   file path parent mkdir   file path touch     and note that rmdir fails unless it s empty  which is why rmtree is so convenient    gt  gt  gt  directory path rmdir   Traceback  most recent call last     File   lt stdin gt    line 1  in  lt module gt    File    anaconda3 lib python3 6 pathlib py   line 1270  in rmdir     self  accessor rmdir self    File    anaconda3 lib python3 6 pathlib py   line 387  in wrapped     return strfunc str pathobj    args  OSError   Errno 39  Directory not empty    home username directory    Now  import rmtree and pass the directory to the funtion   from shutil import rmtree rmtree directory path         remove everything    and we can see the whole thing has been removed    gt  gt  gt  directory path exists   False   Python 2  If you re on Python 2  there s a backport of the pathlib module called pathlib2  which can be installed with pip     pip install pathlib2   And then you can alias the library to pathlib  import pathlib2 as pathlib   Or just directly import the Path object  as demonstrated here    from pathlib2 import Path   If that s too much  you can remove files with os remove or os unlink  from os import unlink  remove from os path import join  expanduser  remove join expanduser        directory file      or  unlink join expanduser        directory file      and you can remove directories with os rmdir   from os import rmdir  rmdir join expanduser        directory      Note that there is also a os removedirs - it only removes empty directories recursively  but it may suit your use-case

User · Answer

To avoid the TOCTOU issue highlighted by   ric Araujo s comment  you can catch an exception to call the correct method   def remove file or dir path  str  - gt  None          Remove a file or directory         try          shutil rmtree path      except NotADirectoryError          os remove path    Since shutil rmtree   will only remove directories and os remove   or os unlink   will only remove files

User · Answer

My personal preference is to work with pathlib objects - it offers a more pythonic and less error-prone way to interact with the filesystem  especially if You develop cross-platform code  In that case  You might use pathlib3x - it offers a backport of the latest  at the date of writing this answer Python 3 10 a0  Python pathlib for Python 3 6 or newer  and a few additional functions like  quot copy quot    quot copy2 quot    quot copytree quot    quot rmtree quot  etc     It also wraps shutil rmtree    gt  python -m pip install pathlib3x   gt  python  gt  gt  gt  import pathlib3x as pathlib    delete a directory tree  gt  gt  gt  my dir to delete pathlib Path  c  temp some dir    gt  gt  gt  my dir to delete rmtree ignore errors True     delete a file  gt  gt  gt  my file to delete pathlib Path  c  temp some file txt    gt  gt  gt  my file to delete unlink missing ok True    you can find it on github or PyPi  Disclaimer  I m the author of the pathlib3x library

User · Answer

shutil rmtree is the asynchronous function   so if you want to check when it complete  you can use while   loop  import os import shutil  shutil rmtree path   while os path exists path     pass  print  done

[python] How to delete a file or folder?

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