How do I remove delete a folder that is not empty

Question

I am getting an  access is denied  error when I attempt to delete a folder that is not empty  I used the following command in my attempt  os remove   folder name      What is the most effective way of removing deleting a folder directory that is not empty

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From the python docs on os walk       Delete everything reachable from the directory named in  top     assuming there are no symbolic links    CAUTION   This is dangerous   For example  if top         it   could delete all your disk files  import os for root  dirs  files in os walk top  topdown False       for name in files          os remove os path join root  name       for name in dirs          os rmdir os path join root  name

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If you don t want to use the shutil module you can just use the os module   from os import listdir  rmdir  remove for i in listdir directoryToRemove       os remove os path join directoryToRemove  i   rmdir directoryToRemove    Now the directory is empty of files

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For Windows  if directory is not empty  and you have read-only files or you get errors like    Access is denied The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process   Try this  os system  rmdir  S  Q       format directory    It s equivalent for rm -rf in Linux Mac

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From docs python org      This example shows how to remove a directory tree on Windows where   some of the files have their read-only bit set  It uses the onerror   callback to clear the readonly bit and reattempt the remove  Any   subsequent failure will propagate   import os  stat import shutil  def remove readonly func  path           Clear the readonly bit and reattempt the removal      os chmod path  stat S IWRITE      func path   shutil rmtree directory  onerror remove readonly

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from python 3 4 you may use   import pathlib  def delete folder pth        for sub in pth iterdir             if sub is dir                 delete folder sub          else               sub unlink       pth rmdir     if you just want to delete the dir content but not the dir itself  remove this line  where pth is a pathlib Path instance  Nice  but may not be the fastest

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I have found a very easy way to Delete any folder Even NOT Empty  or file on WINDOWS OS   os system  powershell exe  rmdir -r D  workspace Branches   s  -Force   CANDIDATE BRANCH

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From the python docs on os walk       Delete everything reachable from the directory named in  top     assuming there are no symbolic links    CAUTION   This is dangerous   For example  if top         it   could delete all your disk files  import os for root  dirs  files in os walk top  topdown False       for name in files          os remove os path join root  name       for name in dirs          os rmdir os path join root  name

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With os walk I would propose the solution which consists of 3 one-liner Python calls   python -c  import sys  import os   os chmod os path join rs d   0o777  for rs ds fs in os walk  path   for d in ds   python -c  import sys  import os   os chmod os path join rs f   0o777  for rs ds fs in os walk  path   for f in fs   python -c  import os  import shutil  shutil rmtree  path   ignore errors False     The first script chmod s all sub-directories  the second script chmod s all files  Then the third script removes everything with no impediments   I have tested this from the  Shell Script  in a Jenkins job  I did not want to store a new Python script into SCM  that s why searched for a one-line solution  and it worked for Linux and Windows

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import shutil  shutil rmtree   folder name     Standard Library Reference  shutil rmtree   By design  rmtree fails on folder trees containing read-only files  If you want the folder to be deleted regardless of whether it contains read-only files  then use  shutil rmtree   folder name   ignore errors True

User · Answer

I have found a very easy way to Delete any folder Even NOT Empty  or file on WINDOWS OS   os system  powershell exe  rmdir -r D  workspace Branches   s  -Force   CANDIDATE BRANCH

User · Answer

Ten years later and using Python 3 7 and Linux there are still different ways to do this   import subprocess from pathlib import Path   using pathlib Path path   Path   path to your dir   subprocess run   rm    -rf   str path      using strings path     path to your dir  subprocess run   rm    -rf   path     Essentially it s using Python s subprocess module to run the bash script   rm -rf   path to your dir as if you were using the terminal to accomplish the same task  It s not fully Python  but it gets it done    The reason I included the pathlib Path example is because in my experience it s very useful when dealing with many paths that change  The extra steps of importing the pathlib Path module and converting the end results to strings is often a lower cost to me for development time  It would be convenient if Path rmdir   came with an arg option to explicitly handle non-empty dirs

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from python 3 4 you may use   import pathlib  def delete folder pth        for sub in pth iterdir             if sub is dir                 delete folder sub          else               sub unlink       pth rmdir     if you just want to delete the dir content but not the dir itself  remove this line  where pth is a pathlib Path instance  Nice  but may not be the fastest

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Base on kkubasik s answer  check if folder exists before remove  more robust  import shutil def remove folder path         check if folder exists     if os path exists path              remove if exists          shutil rmtree path      else             throw your exception to handle this special scenario          raise XXError  your exception    remove folder   folder name

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import shutil shutil rmtree dest  ignore errors True

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You can use os system command for simplicity   import os os system  rm -rf dirname     As obvious  it actually invokes system terminal to accomplish this task

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Just some python 3 5 options to complete the answers above   I would have loved to find them here      import os import shutil from send2trash import send2trash    shutil delete permanently    Delete folder if empty  root   r C  Users Me Desktop test     for dir  subdirs  files in os walk root          if subdirs       and files                   send2trash dir             print dir     folder removed     Delete also folder if it contains this file      elif subdirs       and len files     1    if contains no sub folder and only 1 file          if files 0     desktop ini  or                send2trash dir              print dir     folder removed           else              print dir    delete folder if it contains only  srt or  txt file s       elif subdirs         if dir doesn   t contains subdirectory         ext      srt     txt           contains other ext 0         for file in files              if not file endswith ext                     contains other ext True         if contains other ext   0                  send2trash dir                  print dir     dir deleted     Delete folder if its size is less than 400kb    def get tree size path          Return total size of files in given path and subdirs         total   0     for entry in os scandir path           if entry is dir follow symlinks False               total    get tree size entry path          else              total    entry stat follow symlinks False  st size     return total   for dir  subdirs  files in os walk root          If get tree size dir   lt  400000        400kb         send2trash dir      print dir   dir deleted

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def deleteDir dirPath       deleteFiles          deleteDirs          for root  dirs  files in os walk dirPath           for f in files              deleteFiles append os path join root  f           for d in dirs              deleteDirs append os path join root  d       for f in deleteFiles          os remove f      for d in deleteDirs          os rmdir d      os rmdir dirPath

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import shutil  shutil rmtree   folder name     Standard Library Reference  shutil rmtree   By design  rmtree fails on folder trees containing read-only files  If you want the folder to be deleted regardless of whether it contains read-only files  then use  shutil rmtree   folder name   ignore errors True

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if you are sure  that you want to delete the entire dir tree  and are no more interested in contents of dir  then crawling for entire dir tree is stupidness    just call native OS command from python to do that  It will be faster  efficient and less memory consuming    RMDIR c  blah  s  q    or  nix    rm -rf  home whatever    In python  the code will look like    import sys import os  mswindows    sys platform     win32    def getstatusoutput cmd          Return  status  output  of executing cmd in a shell         if not mswindows          return commands getstatusoutput cmd      pipe   os popen cmd     2 gt  amp 1    r       text   pipe read       sts   pipe close       if sts is None  sts   0     if text -1        n   text   text  -1      return sts  text   def deleteDir path          deletes the path entirely        if mswindows           cmd    RMDIR    path     s  q      else          cmd    rm -rf   path     result   getstatusoutput cmd      if result 0   0           raise RuntimeError result 1

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Base on kkubasik s answer  check if folder exists before remove  more robust  import shutil def remove folder path         check if folder exists     if os path exists path              remove if exists          shutil rmtree path      else             throw your exception to handle this special scenario          raise XXError  your exception    remove folder   folder name

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To delete a folder even if it might not exist  avoiding the race condition in Charles Chow s answer  but still have errors when other things go wrong  e g  permission problems  disk read error  the file isn t a directory   For Python 3 x   import shutil  def ignore absent file func  path  exc inf       except instance   exc inf 1      if isinstance except instance  FileNotFoundError           return     raise except instance  shutil rmtree dir to delete  onerror ignore absent file    The Python 2 7 code is almost the same   import shutil import errno  def ignore absent file func  path  exc inf       except instance   exc inf 1      if isinstance except instance  OSError  and           except instance errno    errno ENOENT          return     raise except instance  shutil rmtree dir to delete  onerror ignore absent file

User · Answer

From the python docs on os walk       Delete everything reachable from the directory named in  top     assuming there are no symbolic links    CAUTION   This is dangerous   For example  if top         it   could delete all your disk files  import os for root  dirs  files in os walk top  topdown False       for name in files          os remove os path join root  name       for name in dirs          os rmdir os path join root  name

User · Answer

import shutil  shutil rmtree   folder name     Standard Library Reference  shutil rmtree   By design  rmtree fails on folder trees containing read-only files  If you want the folder to be deleted regardless of whether it contains read-only files  then use  shutil rmtree   folder name   ignore errors True

User · Answer

From docs python org      This example shows how to remove a directory tree on Windows where   some of the files have their read-only bit set  It uses the onerror   callback to clear the readonly bit and reattempt the remove  Any   subsequent failure will propagate   import os  stat import shutil  def remove readonly func  path           Clear the readonly bit and reattempt the removal      os chmod path  stat S IWRITE      func path   shutil rmtree directory  onerror remove readonly

User · Answer

if you are sure  that you want to delete the entire dir tree  and are no more interested in contents of dir  then crawling for entire dir tree is stupidness    just call native OS command from python to do that  It will be faster  efficient and less memory consuming    RMDIR c  blah  s  q    or  nix    rm -rf  home whatever    In python  the code will look like    import sys import os  mswindows    sys platform     win32    def getstatusoutput cmd          Return  status  output  of executing cmd in a shell         if not mswindows          return commands getstatusoutput cmd      pipe   os popen cmd     2 gt  amp 1    r       text   pipe read       sts   pipe close       if sts is None  sts   0     if text -1        n   text   text  -1      return sts  text   def deleteDir path          deletes the path entirely        if mswindows           cmd    RMDIR    path     s  q      else          cmd    rm -rf   path     result   getstatusoutput cmd      if result 0   0           raise RuntimeError result 1

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In my case the only way to delete was by using all possibilities because my code was supposed to run either by cmd exe or powershell exe  If it is your case  just create a function with this code and you will be fine             usr bin env python3          import shutil         from os import path  system         import sys            Try to delete the folder ---------------------------------------------         if  path isdir folder                shutil rmtree folder  ignore errors True           if  path isdir folder                try                  system  quot rd -r  0  quot  format folder               except Exception as e                  print  quot WARN  Failed to delete   gt   0  quot  format e  file sys stderr           if  path isdir self backup folder wrk                try                  system  quot rd  s  q  0  quot  format folder               except Exception as e                  print  quot WARN  Failed to delete   gt   0  quot  format e  file sys stderr           if  path isdir folder                print  quot WARN  Failed to delete  0  quot  format folder  file sys stderr            -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

User · Answer

You can use os system command for simplicity   import os os system  rm -rf dirname     As obvious  it actually invokes system terminal to accomplish this task

User · Answer

If you don t want to use the shutil module you can just use the os module   from os import listdir  rmdir  remove for i in listdir directoryToRemove       os remove os path join directoryToRemove  i   rmdir directoryToRemove    Now the directory is empty of files

User · Answer

import os import stat import shutil  def errorRemoveReadonly func  path  exc       excvalue   exc 1      if func in  os rmdir  os remove  and excvalue errno    errno EACCES            change the file to be readable writable executable  0777         os chmod path  stat S IRWXU   stat S IRWXG   stat S IRWXO              retry         func path      else            raiseenter code here  shutil rmtree path  ignore errors False  onerror errorRemoveReadonly     If ignore errors is set  errors are ignored  otherwise  if onerror is set  it is called to handle the error with arguments  func  path  exc info  where func is os listdir  os remove  or os rmdir  path is the argument to that function that caused it to fail  and exc info is a tuple returned by sys exc info    If ignore errors is false and onerror is None  an exception is raised enter code here

User · Answer

Recursion-based  pure pathlib solution  from pathlib import Path  def remove path path  Path       if path is file   or path is symlink            path unlink           return     for p in path iterdir            remove path p      path rmdir    Supports Windows and symbolic links

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import os import stat import shutil  def errorRemoveReadonly func  path  exc       excvalue   exc 1      if func in  os rmdir  os remove  and excvalue errno    errno EACCES            change the file to be readable writable executable  0777         os chmod path  stat S IRWXU   stat S IRWXG   stat S IRWXO              retry         func path      else            raiseenter code here  shutil rmtree path  ignore errors False  onerror errorRemoveReadonly     If ignore errors is set  errors are ignored  otherwise  if onerror is set  it is called to handle the error with arguments  func  path  exc info  where func is os listdir  os remove  or os rmdir  path is the argument to that function that caused it to fail  and exc info is a tuple returned by sys exc info    If ignore errors is false and onerror is None  an exception is raised enter code here

User · Answer

Just some python 3 5 options to complete the answers above   I would have loved to find them here      import os import shutil from send2trash import send2trash    shutil delete permanently    Delete folder if empty  root   r C  Users Me Desktop test     for dir  subdirs  files in os walk root          if subdirs       and files                   send2trash dir             print dir     folder removed     Delete also folder if it contains this file      elif subdirs       and len files     1    if contains no sub folder and only 1 file          if files 0     desktop ini  or                send2trash dir              print dir     folder removed           else              print dir    delete folder if it contains only  srt or  txt file s       elif subdirs         if dir doesn   t contains subdirectory         ext      srt     txt           contains other ext 0         for file in files              if not file endswith ext                     contains other ext True         if contains other ext   0                  send2trash dir                  print dir     dir deleted     Delete folder if its size is less than 400kb    def get tree size path          Return total size of files in given path and subdirs         total   0     for entry in os scandir path           if entry is dir follow symlinks False               total    get tree size entry path          else              total    entry stat follow symlinks False  st size     return total   for dir  subdirs  files in os walk root          If get tree size dir   lt  400000        400kb         send2trash dir      print dir   dir deleted

User · Answer

import shutil  shutil rmtree   folder name     Standard Library Reference  shutil rmtree   By design  rmtree fails on folder trees containing read-only files  If you want the folder to be deleted regardless of whether it contains read-only files  then use  shutil rmtree   folder name   ignore errors True

User · Answer

def deleteDir dirPath       deleteFiles          deleteDirs          for root  dirs  files in os walk dirPath           for f in files              deleteFiles append os path join root  f           for d in dirs              deleteDirs append os path join root  d       for f in deleteFiles          os remove f      for d in deleteDirs          os rmdir d      os rmdir dirPath

User · Answer

import shutil shutil rmtree dest  ignore errors True

User · Answer

With os walk I would propose the solution which consists of 3 one-liner Python calls   python -c  import sys  import os   os chmod os path join rs d   0o777  for rs ds fs in os walk  path   for d in ds   python -c  import sys  import os   os chmod os path join rs f   0o777  for rs ds fs in os walk  path   for f in fs   python -c  import os  import shutil  shutil rmtree  path   ignore errors False     The first script chmod s all sub-directories  the second script chmod s all files  Then the third script removes everything with no impediments   I have tested this from the  Shell Script  in a Jenkins job  I did not want to store a new Python script into SCM  that s why searched for a one-line solution  and it worked for Linux and Windows

User · Answer

Recursion-based  pure pathlib solution  from pathlib import Path  def remove path path  Path       if path is file   or path is symlink            path unlink           return     for p in path iterdir            remove path p      path rmdir    Supports Windows and symbolic links

User · Answer

From the python docs on os walk       Delete everything reachable from the directory named in  top     assuming there are no symbolic links    CAUTION   This is dangerous   For example  if top         it   could delete all your disk files  import os for root  dirs  files in os walk top  topdown False       for name in files          os remove os path join root  name       for name in dirs          os rmdir os path join root  name

User · Answer

In my case the only way to delete was by using all possibilities because my code was supposed to run either by cmd exe or powershell exe  If it is your case  just create a function with this code and you will be fine             usr bin env python3          import shutil         from os import path  system         import sys            Try to delete the folder ---------------------------------------------         if  path isdir folder                shutil rmtree folder  ignore errors True           if  path isdir folder                try                  system  quot rd -r  0  quot  format folder               except Exception as e                  print  quot WARN  Failed to delete   gt   0  quot  format e  file sys stderr           if  path isdir self backup folder wrk                try                  system  quot rd  s  q  0  quot  format folder               except Exception as e                  print  quot WARN  Failed to delete   gt   0  quot  format e  file sys stderr           if  path isdir folder                print  quot WARN  Failed to delete  0  quot  format folder  file sys stderr            -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

User · Answer

I d like to add a  quot pure pathlib quot  approach  from pathlib import Path from typing import Union  def del dir target  Union Path  str   only if empty  bool   False        quot  quot  quot      Delete a given directory and its subdirectories        param target  The directory to delete      param only if empty  Raise RuntimeError if any file is found in the tree      quot  quot  quot      target   Path target  expanduser       assert target is dir       for p in sorted target glob          reverse True           if not p exists                continue         p chmod 0o666          if p is dir                p rmdir           else              if only if empty                  raise RuntimeError f  p parent  is not empty                p unlink       target rmdir    This relies on the fact that Path is orderable  and longer paths will always sort after shorter paths  just like str  Therefore  directories will come before files  If we reverse the sort  files will then come before their respective containers  so we can simply unlink rmdir them one by one with one pass  Benefits   It s NOT relying on external binaries  everything uses Python s batteries-included modules  Python  gt   3 6   Which means that it does not need to repeatedly start a new subprocess to do unlinking   It s quite fast  amp  simple  you don t have to implement your own recursion It s cross-platform  at least  that s what pathlib promises in Python 3 6  no operation above stated to not run on Windows  If needed  one can do a very granular logging  e g   log each deletion as it happens

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I d like to add a  quot pure pathlib quot  approach  from pathlib import Path from typing import Union  def del dir target  Union Path  str   only if empty  bool   False        quot  quot  quot      Delete a given directory and its subdirectories        param target  The directory to delete      param only if empty  Raise RuntimeError if any file is found in the tree      quot  quot  quot      target   Path target  expanduser       assert target is dir       for p in sorted target glob          reverse True           if not p exists                continue         p chmod 0o666          if p is dir                p rmdir           else              if only if empty                  raise RuntimeError f  p parent  is not empty                p unlink       target rmdir    This relies on the fact that Path is orderable  and longer paths will always sort after shorter paths  just like str  Therefore  directories will come before files  If we reverse the sort  files will then come before their respective containers  so we can simply unlink rmdir them one by one with one pass  Benefits   It s NOT relying on external binaries  everything uses Python s batteries-included modules  Python  gt   3 6   Which means that it does not need to repeatedly start a new subprocess to do unlinking   It s quite fast  amp  simple  you don t have to implement your own recursion It s cross-platform  at least  that s what pathlib promises in Python 3 6  no operation above stated to not run on Windows  If needed  one can do a very granular logging  e g   log each deletion as it happens

User · Answer

To delete a folder even if it might not exist  avoiding the race condition in Charles Chow s answer  but still have errors when other things go wrong  e g  permission problems  disk read error  the file isn t a directory   For Python 3 x   import shutil  def ignore absent file func  path  exc inf       except instance   exc inf 1      if isinstance except instance  FileNotFoundError           return     raise except instance  shutil rmtree dir to delete  onerror ignore absent file    The Python 2 7 code is almost the same   import shutil import errno  def ignore absent file func  path  exc inf       except instance   exc inf 1      if isinstance except instance  OSError  and           except instance errno    errno ENOENT          return     raise except instance  shutil rmtree dir to delete  onerror ignore absent file

User · Answer

Ten years later and using Python 3 7 and Linux there are still different ways to do this   import subprocess from pathlib import Path   using pathlib Path path   Path   path to your dir   subprocess run   rm    -rf   str path      using strings path     path to your dir  subprocess run   rm    -rf   path     Essentially it s using Python s subprocess module to run the bash script   rm -rf   path to your dir as if you were using the terminal to accomplish the same task  It s not fully Python  but it gets it done    The reason I included the pathlib Path example is because in my experience it s very useful when dealing with many paths that change  The extra steps of importing the pathlib Path module and converting the end results to strings is often a lower cost to me for development time  It would be convenient if Path rmdir   came with an arg option to explicitly handle non-empty dirs

User · Answer

For Windows  if directory is not empty  and you have read-only files or you get errors like    Access is denied The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process   Try this  os system  rmdir  S  Q       format directory    It s equivalent for rm -rf in Linux Mac

[python] How do I remove/delete a folder that is not empty?

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