How can I delete a file or folder?
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.
Python syntax to delete a file
import os
os.remove("/tmp/<file_name>.txt")
or
import os
os.unlink("/tmp/<file_name>.txt")
or
pathlib Library for Python version >= 3.4
file_to_rem = pathlib.Path("/tmp/<file_name>.txt")
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 if the file or folder exists and then delete it. You can achieve this in two ways:
os.path.isfile("/path/to/file")
Use exception handling.
EXAMPLE for os.path.isfile
#!/usr/bin/python
import os
myfile = "/tmp/foo.txt"
# If file exists, delete it.
if os.path.isfile(myfile):
os.remove(myfile)
else:
# If it fails, inform the user.
print("Error: %s file not found" % myfile)
Exception Handling
#!/usr/bin/python
import os
# Get input.
myfile = raw_input("Enter file name to delete: ")
# Try to delete the file.
try:
os.remove(myfile)
except OSError as e:
# If it fails, inform the user.
print("Error: %s - %s." % (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("Enter directory name: ")
# Try to remove the tree; if it fails, throw an error using try...except.
try:
shutil.rmtree(mydir)
except OSError as e:
print("Error: %s - %s." % (e.filename, e.strerror))
Use
shutil.rmtree(path[, ignore_errors[, onerror]])
(See complete documentation on shutil) and/or
os.remove
and
os.rmdir
(Complete documentation on os.)
Here is a robust function that uses both os.remove and shutil.rmtree:
def remove(path):
""" param <path> 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))
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()
Deleting a file or folder in Python
There are multiple ways to Delete a File in Python but the best ways are the following:
os.remove() removes a file.
os.unlink() removes a file. it is a Unix name of remove() method.
shutil.rmtree() deletes a directory and all its contents.
pathlib.Path.unlink() deletes a single file The pathlib module is available in Python 3.4 and above.
os.remove()
Example 1: Basic Example to Remove a File Using os.remove() Method.
import os
os.remove("test_file.txt")
print("File removed successfully")
Example 2: Checking if File Exists using os.path.isfile and Deleting it With os.remove
import os
#checking if file exist or not
if(os.path.isfile("test.txt")):
#os.remove() function to remove the file
os.remove("test.txt")
#Printing the confirmation message of deletion
print("File Deleted successfully")
else:
print("File does not exist")
#Showing the message instead of throwig an error
Example 3: Python Program to Delete all files with a specific extension
import os
from os import listdir
my_path = 'C:\Python Pool\Test\'
for file_name in listdir(my_path):
if file_name.endswith('.txt'):
os.remove(my_path + file_name)
Example 4: Python Program to Delete All Files Inside a Folder
To delete all files inside a particular directory, you simply have to use the * symbol as the pattern string.
#Importing os and glob modules
import os, glob
#Loop Through the folder projects all files and deleting them one by one
for file in glob.glob("pythonpool/*"):
os.remove(file)
print("Deleted " + str(file))
os.unlink()
os.unlink() is an alias or another name of os.remove() . As in the Unix OS remove is also known as unlink.
Note: All the functionalities and syntax is the same of os.unlink() and os.remove(). Both of them are used to delete the Python file path.
Both are methods in the os module in Python’s standard libraries which performs the deletion function.
shutil.rmtree()
Example 1: Python Program to Delete a File Using shutil.rmtree()
import shutil
import os
# location
location = "E:/Projects/PythonPool/"
# directory
dir = "Test"
# path
path = os.path.join(location, dir)
# removing directory
shutil.rmtree(path)
Example 2: Python Program to Delete a File Using shutil.rmtree()
import shutil
import os
location = "E:/Projects/PythonPool/"
dir = "Test"
path = os.path.join(location, dir)
shutil.rmtree(path)
pathlib.Path.rmdir() to remove Empty Directory
Pathlib module provides different ways to interact with your files. Rmdir is one of the path functions which allows you to delete an empty folder. Firstly, you need to select the Path() for the directory, and then calling rmdir() method will check the folder size. If it’s empty, it’ll delete it.
This is a good way to deleting empty folders without any fear of losing actual data.
from pathlib import Path
q = Path('foldername')
q.rmdir()
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:
>>> file_path.is_file()
True
Now let's delete them. First the file:
>>> file_path.unlink() # remove file
>>> file_path.is_file()
False
>>> file_path.exists()
False
We can use globbing to remove multiple files - first let's create a few files for this:
>>> (directory_path / 'foo.my').touch()
>>> (directory_path / 'bar.my').touch()
Then just iterate over the glob pattern:
>>> 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:
>>> directory_path.rmdir() # remove directory
>>> directory_path.is_dir()
False
>>> 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:
>>> directory_path.rmdir()
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
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:
>>> 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.
This is my function for deleting dirs. The "path" requires the full pathname.
import os
def rm_dir(path):
cwd = os.getcwd()
if not os.path.exists(os.path.join(cwd, path)):
return False
os.chdir(os.path.join(cwd, path))
for file in os.listdir():
print("file = " + file)
os.remove(file)
print(cwd)
os.chdir(cwd)
os.rmdir(os.path.join(cwd, path))
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')
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)
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
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))
To avoid the TOCTOU issue highlighted by Éric Araujo's comment, you can catch an exception to call the correct method:
def remove_file_or_dir(path: str) -> 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.
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 "copy", "copy2", "copytree", "rmtree" etc ...
It also wraps shutil.rmtree:
$> python -m pip install pathlib3x
$> python
>>> import pathlib3x as pathlib
# delete a directory tree
>>> my_dir_to_delete=pathlib.Path('c:/temp/some_dir')
>>> my_dir_to_delete.rmtree(ignore_errors=True)
# delete a file
>>> my_file_to_delete=pathlib.Path('c:/temp/some_file.txt')
>>> 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.
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)
I want to check if a folder by the name "Output Folder" exists at the path
D:\LaptopData\ISIS project\test\d0_63_b4_01_18_ba\00_17_41_41_00_0e
if the folder by the name "Output Folder" does not exist then create that folder there.
can anyone please help with providing a solution for this?
The best way would be to use os.makedirs like,
os.makedirs(name, mode=0o777, exist_ok=False)
Recursive directory creation function. Like mkdir(), but makes a intermediate-level directories needed to contain the leaf directory.
The mode parameter is passed to mkdir() for creating the leaf directory; see the mkdir() description for how it is interpreted. To set the file permission bits of any newly-created parent directories you can set the umask before invoking makedirs(). The file permission bits of existing parent directories are not changed.
>>> import os
>>> os.makedirs(path, exist_ok=True)
# which will not raise an error if the `path` already exists and it
# will recursively create the paths, if the preceding path doesn't exist
or if you are on python3, using pathlib like,
Path.mkdir(mode=0o777, parents=False, exist_ok=False)
Create a new directory at this given path. If mode is given, it is combined with the process’ umask value to determine the file mode and access flags. If the path already exists, FileExistsError is raised.
If parents is true, any missing parents of this path are created as needed; they are created with the default permissions without taking mode into account (mimicking the POSIX mkdir -p command).
If parents is false (the default), a missing parent raises FileNotFoundError. > If exist_ok is false (the default), FileExistsError is raised if the target directory already exists.
If exist_ok is true, FileExistsError exceptions will be ignored (same behavior as the POSIX mkdir -p command), but only if the last
path component is not an existing non-directory file.
Changed in version 3.5: The exist_ok parameter was added.
>>> import pathlib
>>> path = pathlib.Path(somepath)
>>> path.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
import os
import os.path
folder = "abc"
os.chdir(".")
print("current dir is: %s" % (os.getcwd()))
if os.path.isdir(folder):
print("Exists")
else:
print("Doesn't exists")
os.mkdir(folder)
I hope this helps
pathlib application where csv files need to be created inside a csv folder under parent directory, from a xlsx file with full path (e.g., taken with Path Copy Copy) provided.
If exist_ok is true, FileExistsError exceptions will be ignored, if directory is already created.
from pathlib import Path
wrkfl = 'C:/xlsx/my.xlsx' # path get from Path Copy Copy context menu
xls_file = Path(wrkfl)
(xls_file.parent / 'csv').mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
Search for folder whether it exists or not, it will return true or false: os.path.exists('<folder-path>')
Create a new folder: os.mkdir('<folder-path>')
Note: import os will be required to import the module.
Hope you can write the logic using above two functions as per your requirement.
import os
def folder_creat(name, directory):
os.chdir(directory)
fileli = os.listdir()
if name in fileli:
print(f'Folder "{name}" exist!')
else:
os.mkdir(name)
print(f'Folder "{name}" succesfully created!')
return
folder_creat('Output Folder', r'D:\LaptopData\ISIS project\test\d0_63_b4_01_18_ba\00_17_41_41_00_0e')
This piece of code does the exactly what you wanted. First gets the absolute path, then joins folder wanted in the path, and finally creates it if it is not exists.
import os
# Gets current working directory
path = os.getcwd()
# Joins the folder that we wanted to create
folder_name = 'output'
path = os.path.join(path, folder_name)
# Creates the folder, and checks if it is created or not.
os.makedirs(path, exist_ok=True)
Getting help from the answers above, I reached this solution
if not os.path.exists(os.getcwd() + '/' + folderName):
os.makedirs(os.getcwd() + '/' + folderName, exist_ok=True)
I keep getting an error that says
"IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'C:\Temp\test2_empty\Storage\Poly1.kml'"
What I want to do is copy a file from a directory move it to a temporary storage folder and rename the file and then move that file to another folder. What is the best way to fix this issue?
from qgis.core import*
import glob, os, shutil, time, qgis
path = r"C:\Temp\test2_kml"
dest = r"C:\Temp\test2_empty"
storage = r"C:\Temp\test2_empty\Storage"
for root,d_names,f_names in os.walk(path):
if not f_names:
continue
prefix = os.path.basename(root)
for f in f_names:
if f.endswith('.kml'):
src = os.path.join(root,f)
print("...")
print(time.strftime('%m/%d/%Y', time.gmtime(os.path.getmtime(src))))
print(os.path.realpath(src))
print(f)
shutil.copy2(src, storage)
for root2,d_names2,f_names2 in os.walk(storage):
for f2 in f_names2:
src2= os.path.join(root2,f2)
os.rename(os.path.join(root2,f2), os.path.join(root2, "{}_{}".format(prefix,f2)))
shutil.move(src2, dest)
Create your destination directory - os.makedirs(storage) before calling shutil copy.
If you want to accept the pre-existence of this directory, you can:
for python 3.2+ - add keyword argument exist_ok=True
for python <3.2 - add try / except block for OSError exception.
I am trying to use the listdir function from the os module in python to recover a list of filenames from a particular folder.
here's the code:
import os
def rename_file():
# extract filenames from a folder
#for each filename, rename filename
list_of_files = os.listdir("/home/admin-pc/Downloads/prank/prank")
print (list_of_files)
I am getting the following error:
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory:
it seems to give no trouble in windows, where you start your directory structure from the c drive.
how do i modify the code to work in linux?
The code is correct. There should be some error with the path you provided.
You could open a terminal and enter into the folder first. In the terminal, just key in pwd, then you could get the correct path.
Hope that works.
You could modify your function to exclude that error with check of existence of file/directory:
import os
def rename_file():
# extract filenames from a folder
#for each filename, rename filename
path_to_file = "/home/admin-pc/Downloads/prank/prank"
if os.exists(path_to_file):
list_of_files = os.listdir(path_to_file)
print (list_of_files)
I have researched the similarly asked questions without prevail. I am trying to os.walk() a file tree copying a set of files to each directory. Individual files seem to copy ok (1st iteration atleast), but an error is thrown (IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: 'S:/NoahFolder\.images') while trying to copy a folder (.images) and its contents? I have full permissions to this folder (I believe).
What gives?
import os
import shutil
import glob
dir_src = r'S:/NoahFolder/.*'
dir_dst = r'E:/Easements/Lynn'
src_files = glob.glob(dir_src)
print src_files
for path,dirname,files in os.walk(dir_dst):
for item in src_files:
print path
print item
shutil.copy(item, path)
shutil.copy will only copy files, not directories. Consider using shutil.copytree instead, that's what it was designed for.
This implementation of copytree seemed to get it done! Thanks for the input # holdenweb
from distutils.dir_util import copy_tree
for path,dirname,files in os.walk(dir_dst):
for item in src_files:
try:
shutil.copy(item, path)
except:
print item
print path
copy_tree(dir_src, path)