os.removedirs not working

[Golawala, Moiz M (GE Infrastructure)]

Hi All,

I have a small program that where I am using os.removedirs('C:\\someDir') on windows. I get the error that the directory is not empty. Sure there are sub-directories under it and all file and directories are deletable(nothing is locked by the system) and there are no permission issues either. Can someone please tell me if I am using the os.removedirs() correctly?

Moiz Golawala
GE Infrastructure, Security
Software Engineer
Enterprise Solutions

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GE Security, Inc.

 

[Christopher T King]

I have a small program that where I am using
os.removedirs('C:\\someDir') on windows. I get the error that the
directory is not empty. Sure there are sub-directories under it and all
file and directories are deletable(nothing is locked by the system) and
there are no permission issues either. Can someone please tell me if I
am using the os.removedirs() correctly?

os.removedirs() won't remove files for you. As far as I can tell, there's
no builtin Python function that does this, but the library docs for os
give the following bit of code that does just what you want:

import os
from os.path import join
# Delete everything reachable from the directory named in 'top'.
# CAUTION: This is dangerous! For example, if top == '/', it
# could delete all your disk files.
for root, dirs, files in os.walk(top, topdown=False):
for name in files:
os.remove(join(root, name))
for name in dirs:
os.rmdir(join(root, name))

My guess as to why this isn't a library function is precisely the reason
stated in that comment: it's potentially dangerous!

 

[CptPicard]

You could use shutil.rmtree : it works fine!
But I tend to prefer the solution offered by Chistopher T King: It gives you
more control on what you are doing.

 

[Christopher T King]

You could use shutil.rmtree : it works fine!

Oh wow, I completely forgot about shutil. Good stuff, that.