Related
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)
file = open(r"C:\Users\MyUsername\Desktop\PythonCode\configure.txt")
Right now this is what im using. However if people download the program on their computer the file wont link because its a specific path. How would i be able to link the file if its in the same folder as the script.
You can use __file__. Technically not every module has this attribute, but if you're not loading your module from a file, loading a text file from the same folder becomes a moot point anyway.
from os.path import abspath, dirname, join
with open(join(dirname(abspath(__file__)), 'configure.txt')):
...
While this will do what you're asking for, it's not necessarily the best way to store configuration.
Use os module to get your current filepath.
import os
this_dir, this_filename = os.path.split(__file__)
myfile = os.path.join(this_dir, 'configure.txt')
file = open(myfile)
# import the OS library
import os
# create the absolute location with correct OS path separator to file
config_file = os.getcwd() + os.path.sep + "configure.txt"
# Open file
file = open(config_file)
This method will make sure the correct path separators are used.
I have a Python script which opens a specific text file located in a specific directory (working directory) and perform some actions.
(Assume that if there is a text file in the directory then it will always be no more than one such .txt file)
with open('TextFileName.txt', 'r') as f:
for line in f:
# perform some string manipulation and calculations
# write some results to a different text file
with open('results.txt', 'a') as r:
r.write(someResults)
My question is how I can have the script locate the text (.txt) file in the directory and open it without explicitly providing its name (i.e. without giving the 'TextFileName.txt'). So, no arguments for which text file to open would be required for this script to run.
Is there a way to achieve this in Python?
You could use os.listdir to get the files in the current directory, and filter them by their extension:
import os
txt_files = [f for f in os.listdir('.') if f.endswith('.txt')]
if len(txt_files) != 1:
raise ValueError('should be only one txt file in the current directory')
filename = txt_files[0]
You Can Also Use glob Which is easier than os
import glob
text_file = glob.glob('*.txt')
# wild card to catch all the files ending with txt and return as list of files
if len(text_file) != 1:
raise ValueError('should be only one txt file in the current directory')
filename = text_file[0]
glob searches the current directory set by os.curdir
You can change to the working directory by setting
os.chdir(r'cur_working_directory')
Since Python version 3.4, it is possible to use the great pathlib library. It offers a glob method which makes it easy to filter according to extensions:
from pathlib import Path
path = Path(".") # current directory
extension = ".txt"
file_with_extension = next(path.glob(f"*{extension}")) # returns the file with extension or None
if file_with_extension:
with open(file_with_extension):
...
I have a small text (XML) file that I want a Python function to load. The location of the text file is always in a fixed relative position to the Python function code.
For example, on my local computer, the files text.xml and mycode.py could reside in:
/a/b/text.xml
/a/c/mycode.py
Later at run time, the files could reside in:
/mnt/x/b/text.xml
/mnt/x/c/mycode.py
How do I ensure I can load in the file? Do I need the absolute path? I see that I can use os.path.isfile, but that presumes I have a path.
you can do a call as follows:
import os
BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__))
This will get you the directory of the python file you're calling from mycode.py
then accessing the xml files is as simple as:
xml_file = "{}/../text.xml".format(BASE_DIR)
fin = open(xml_file, 'r+')
If the parent directory of the two directories are always the same this should work:
import os
path_to_script = os.path.realpath(__file__)
parent_directory = os.path.dirname(path_to_script)
for root, dirs, files in os.walk(parent_directory):
for file in files:
if file == 'text.xml':
path_to_xml = os.path.join(root, file)
You can use the special variable __file__ which gives you the current file name (see http://docs.python.org/2/reference/datamodel.html).
So in your first example, you can reference text.xml this way in mycode.py:
xml_path = os.path.join(__file__, '..', '..', 'text.xml')
I want to change a.txt to b.kml.
Use os.rename:
import os
os.rename('a.txt', 'b.kml')
Usage:
os.rename('from.extension.whatever','to.another.extension')
File may be inside a directory, in that case specify the path:
import os
old_file = os.path.join("directory", "a.txt")
new_file = os.path.join("directory", "b.kml")
os.rename(old_file, new_file)
As of Python 3.4 one can use the pathlib module to solve this.
If you happen to be on an older version, you can use the backported version found here
Let's assume you are not in the root path (just to add a bit of difficulty to it) you want to rename, and have to provide a full path, we can look at this:
some_path = 'a/b/c/the_file.extension'
So, you can take your path and create a Path object out of it:
from pathlib import Path
p = Path(some_path)
Just to provide some information around this object we have now, we can extract things out of it. For example, if for whatever reason we want to rename the file by modifying the filename from the_file to the_file_1, then we can get the filename part:
name_without_extension = p.stem
And still hold the extension in hand as well:
ext = p.suffix
We can perform our modification with a simple string manipulation:
Python 3.6 and greater make use of f-strings!
new_file_name = f"{name_without_extension}_1"
Otherwise:
new_file_name = "{}_{}".format(name_without_extension, 1)
And now we can perform our rename by calling the rename method on the path object we created and appending the ext to complete the proper rename structure we want:
p.rename(Path(p.parent, new_file_name + ext))
More shortly to showcase its simplicity:
Python 3.6+:
from pathlib import Path
p = Path(some_path)
p.rename(Path(p.parent, f"{p.stem}_1_{p.suffix}"))
Versions less than Python 3.6 use the string format method instead:
from pathlib import Path
p = Path(some_path)
p.rename(Path(p.parent, "{}_{}_{}".format(p.stem, 1, p.suffix))
import shutil
shutil.move('a.txt', 'b.kml')
This will work to rename or move a file.
os.rename(old, new)
This is found in the Python docs: http://docs.python.org/library/os.html
As of Python version 3.3 and later, it is generally preferred to use os.replace instead of os.rename so FileExistsError is not raised if the destination file already exists.
assert os.path.isfile('old.txt')
assert os.path.isfile('new.txt')
os.rename('old.txt', 'new.txt')
# Raises FileExistsError
os.replace('old.txt', 'new.txt')
# Does not raise exception
assert not os.path.isfile('old.txt')
assert os.path.isfile('new.txt')
See the documentation.
Use os.rename. But you have to pass full path of both files to the function. If I have a file a.txt on my desktop so I will do and also I have to give full of renamed file too.
os.rename('C:\\Users\\Desktop\\a.txt', 'C:\\Users\\Desktop\\b.kml')
One important point to note here, we should check if any files exists with the new filename.
suppose if b.kml file exists then renaming other file with the same filename leads to deletion of existing b.kml.
import os
if not os.path.exists('b.kml'):
os.rename('a.txt','b.kml')
import os
# Set the path
path = 'a\\b\\c'
# save current working directory
saved_cwd = os.getcwd()
# change your cwd to the directory which contains files
os.chdir(path)
os.rename('a.txt', 'b.klm')
# moving back to the directory you were in
os.chdir(saved_cwd)
Using the Pathlib library's Path.rename instead of os.rename:
import pathlib
original_path = pathlib.Path('a.txt')
new_path = original_path.rename('b.kml')
Here is an example using pathlib only without touching os which changes the names of all files in a directory, based on a string replace operation without using also string concatenation:
from pathlib import Path
path = Path('/talend/studio/plugins/org.talend.designer.components.bigdata_7.3.1.20200214_1052\components/tMongoDB44Connection')
for p in path.glob("tMongoDBConnection*"):
new_name = p.name.replace("tMongoDBConnection", "tMongoDB44Connection")
new_name = p.parent/new_name
p.rename(new_name)
import shutil
import os
files = os.listdir("./pics/")
for key in range(0, len(files)):
print files[key]
shutil.move("./pics/" + files[key],"./pics/img" + str(key) + ".jpeg")
This should do it. python 3+
How to change the first letter of filename in a directory:
import os
path = "/"
for file in os.listdir(path):
os.rename(path + file, path + file.lower().capitalize())
then = os.listdir(path)
print(then)
If you are Using Windows and you want to rename your 1000s of files in a folder then:
You can use the below code. (Python3)
import os
path = os.chdir(input("Enter the path of the Your Image Folder : ")) #Here put the path of your folder where your images are stored
image_name = input("Enter your Image name : ") #Here, enter the name you want your images to have
i = 0
for file in os.listdir(path):
new_file_name = image_name+"_" + str(i) + ".jpg" #here you can change the extention of your renmamed file.
os.rename(file,new_file_name)
i = i + 1
input("Renamed all Images!!")
os.chdir(r"D:\Folder1\Folder2")
os.rename(src,dst)
#src and dst should be inside Folder2
import os
import re
from pathlib import Path
for f in os.listdir(training_data_dir2):
for file in os.listdir( training_data_dir2 + '/' + f):
oldfile= Path(training_data_dir2 + '/' + f + '/' + file)
newfile = Path(training_data_dir2 + '/' + f + '/' + file[49:])
p=oldfile
p.rename(newfile)
You can use os.system to invoke terminal to accomplish the task:
os.system('mv oldfile newfile')