How can I delete the contents of a local folder in Python?

The current project is for Windows, but I would like to see *nix also.

import os, shutil
folder = '/path/to/folder'
for filename in os.listdir(folder):
    file_path = os.path.join(folder, filename)
    try:
        if os.path.isfile(file_path) or os.path.islink(file_path):
            os.unlink(file_path)
        elif os.path.isdir(file_path):
            shutil.rmtree(file_path)
    except Exception as e:
        print('Failed to delete %s. Reason: %s' % (file_path, e))

You can simply do this:

import os
import glob

files = glob.glob('/YOUR/PATH/*')
for f in files:
    os.remove(f)

You can of course use an other filter in you path, for example : /YOU/PATH/*.txt for removing all text files in a directory.

You can delete the folder itself, as well as all its contents, using shutil.rmtree:

import shutil
shutil.rmtree('/path/to/folder')

shutil.rmtree(path, ignore_errors=False, onerror=None)

Delete an entire directory tree; path must point to a directory (but not a symbolic link to a directory). If ignore_errors is true, errors resulting from failed removals will be ignored; if false or omitted, such errors are handled by calling a handler specified by onerror or, if that is omitted, they raise an exception.

Expanding on mhawke’s answer this is what I’ve implemented. It removes all the content of a folder but not the folder itself. Tested on Linux with files, folders and symbolic links, should work on Windows as well.

import os
import shutil

for root, dirs, files in os.walk('/path/to/folder'):
    for f in files:
        os.unlink(os.path.join(root, f))
    for d in dirs:
        shutil.rmtree(os.path.join(root, d))

Using rmtree and recreating the folder could work, but I have run into errors when deleting and immediately recreating folders on network drives.

The proposed solution using walk does not work as it uses rmtree to remove folders and then may attempt to use os.unlink on the files that were previously in those folders. This causes an error.

The posted glob solution will also attempt to delete non-empty folders, causing errors.

I suggest you use:

folder_path = '/path/to/folder'
for file_object in os.listdir(folder_path):
    file_object_path = os.path.join(folder_path, file_object)
    if os.path.isfile(file_object_path) or os.path.islink(file_object_path):
        os.unlink(file_object_path)
    else:
        shutil.rmtree(file_object_path)

This:

• removes all symbolic links
  • dead links
  • links to directories
  • links to files
• removes subdirectories
• does not remove the parent directory

Code:

for filename in os.listdir(dirpath):
    filepath = os.path.join(dirpath, filename)
    try:
        shutil.rmtree(filepath)
    except OSError:
        os.remove(filepath)

As many other answers, this does not try to adjust permissions to enable removal of files/directories.

As a oneliner:

import os

# Python 2.7
map( os.unlink, (os.path.join( mydir,f) for f in os.listdir(mydir)) )

# Python 3+
list( map( os.unlink, (os.path.join( mydir,f) for f in os.listdir(mydir)) ) )

A more robust solution accounting for files and directories as well would be (2.7):

def rm(f):
    if os.path.isdir(f): return os.rmdir(f)
    if os.path.isfile(f): return os.unlink(f)
    raise TypeError, 'must be either file or directory'

map( rm, (os.path.join( mydir,f) for f in os.listdir(mydir)) )

Notes: in case someone down voted my answer, I have something to explain here.

1. Everyone likes short ‘n’ simple answers. However, sometimes the reality is not so simple.
2. Back to my answer. I know shutil.rmtree() could be used to delete a directory tree. I’ve used it many times in my own projects. But you must realize that the directory itself will also be deleted by shutil.rmtree(). While this might be acceptable for some, it’s not a valid answer for deleting the contents of a folder (without side effects).
3. I’ll show you an example of the side effects. Suppose that you have a directory with customized owner and mode bits, where there are a lot of contents. Then you delete it with shutil.rmtree() and rebuild it with os.mkdir(). And you’ll get an empty directory with default (inherited) owner and mode bits instead. While you might have the privilege to delete the contents and even the directory, you might not be able to set back the original owner and mode bits on the directory (e.g. you’re not a superuser).
4. Finally, be patient and read the code. It’s long and ugly (in sight), but proven to be reliable and efficient (in use).

Here’s a long and ugly, but reliable and efficient solution.

It resolves a few problems which are not addressed by the other answerers:

• It correctly handles symbolic links, including not calling shutil.rmtree() on a symbolic link (which will pass the os.path.isdir() test if it links to a directory; even the result of os.walk() contains symbolic linked directories as well).
• It handles read-only files nicely.

Here’s the code (the only useful function is clear_dir()):

import os
import stat
import shutil


# http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1889597/deleting-directory-in-python
def _remove_readonly(fn, path_, excinfo):
    # Handle read-only files and directories
    if fn is os.rmdir:
        os.chmod(path_, stat.S_IWRITE)
        os.rmdir(path_)
    elif fn is os.remove:
        os.lchmod(path_, stat.S_IWRITE)
        os.remove(path_)


def force_remove_file_or_symlink(path_):
    try:
        os.remove(path_)
    except OSError:
        os.lchmod(path_, stat.S_IWRITE)
        os.remove(path_)


# Code from shutil.rmtree()
def is_regular_dir(path_):
    try:
        mode = os.lstat(path_).st_mode
    except os.error:
        mode = 0
    return stat.S_ISDIR(mode)


def clear_dir(path_):
    if is_regular_dir(path_):
        # Given path is a directory, clear its content
        for name in os.listdir(path_):
            fullpath = os.path.join(path_, name)
            if is_regular_dir(fullpath):
                shutil.rmtree(fullpath, onerror=_remove_readonly)
            else:
                force_remove_file_or_symlink(fullpath)
    else:
        # Given path is a file or a symlink.
        # Raise an exception here to avoid accidentally clearing the content
        # of a symbolic linked directory.
        raise OSError("Cannot call clear_dir() on a symbolic link")

I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the awesome pathlib to do this job.

If you only want to remove files in a directory it can be a oneliner

from pathlib import Path

[f.unlink() for f in Path("/path/to/folder").glob("*") if f.is_file()] 

To also recursively remove directories you can write something like this:

from pathlib import Path
from shutil import rmtree

for path in Path("/path/to/folder").glob("**/*"):
    if path.is_file():
        path.unlink()
    elif path.is_dir():
        rmtree(path)

import os
import shutil

# Gather directory contents
contents = [os.path.join(target_dir, i) for i in os.listdir(target_dir)]

# Iterate and remove each item in the appropriate manner
[os.remove(i) if os.path.isfile(i) or os.path.islink(i) else shutil.rmtree(i) for i in contents]

An earlier comment also mentions using os.scandir in Python 3.5+. For example:

import os
import shutil

with os.scandir(target_dir) as entries:
    for entry in entries:
        if entry.is_file() or entry.is_symlink():
            os.remove(entry.path)
        elif entry.is_dir():
            shutil.rmtree(entry.path)

You might be better off using os.walk() for this.

os.listdir() doesn’t distinguish files from directories and you will quickly get into trouble trying to unlink these. There is a good example of using os.walk() to recursively remove a directory here, and hints on how to adapt it to your circumstances.

I used to solve the problem this way:

import shutil
import os

shutil.rmtree(dirpath)
os.mkdir(dirpath)

Yet Another Solution:

import sh
sh.rm(sh.glob('/path/to/folder/*'))

I konw it’s an old thread but I have found something interesting from the official site of python. Just for sharing another idea for removing of all contents in a directory. Because I have some problems of authorization when using shutil.rmtree() and I don’t want to remove the directory and recreate it. The address original is http://docs.python.org/2/library/os.html#os.walk. Hope that could help someone.

def emptydir(top):
    if(top == '/' or top == "\\"): return
    else:
        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))

To delete all the files inside the directory as well as its sub-directories, without removing the folders themselves, simply do this:

import os
mypath = "my_folder" #Enter your path here
for root, dirs, files in os.walk(mypath):
    for file in files:
        os.remove(os.path.join(root, file))

If you are using a *nix system, why not leverage the system command?

import os
path = 'folder/to/clean'
os.system('rm -rf %s/*' % path)

Pretty intuitive way of doing it:

import shutil, os


def remove_folder_contents(path):
    shutil.rmtree(path)
    os.makedirs(path)


remove_folder_contents('/path/to/folder')

Well, I think this code is working. It will not delete the folder and you can use this code to delete files having the particular extension.

import os
import glob

files = glob.glob(r'path/*')
for items in files:
    os.remove(items)

I had to remove files from 3 separate folders inside a single parent directory:

directory
   folderA
      file1
   folderB
      file2
   folderC
      file3

This simple code did the trick for me: (I’m on Unix)

import os
import glob

folders = glob.glob('./path/to/parentdir/*')
for fo in folders:
  file = glob.glob(f'{fo}/*')
  for f in file:
    os.remove(f)

Hope this helps.

I resolved the issue with rmtree makedirs by adding time.sleep() between:

if os.path.isdir(folder_location):
    shutil.rmtree(folder_location)

time.sleep(.5)

os.makedirs(folder_location, 0o777)

Answer for a limited, specific situation: assuming you want to delete the files while maintainig the subfolders tree, you could use a recursive algorithm:

import os

def recursively_remove_files(f):
    if os.path.isfile(f):
        os.unlink(f)
    elif os.path.isdir(f):
        for fi in os.listdir(f):
            recursively_remove_files(os.path.join(f, fi))

recursively_remove_files(my_directory)

Maybe slightly off-topic, but I think many would find it useful

Assuming temp_dir to be deleted, a single line command using os would be:

_ = [os.remove(os.path.join(save_dir,i)) for i in os.listdir(temp_dir)]

Note: This is only a 1-liner for deleting files’ Doesn’t delete directories.

Hope this helps. Thanks.

Use the method bellow to remove the contents of a directory, not the directory itself:

import os
import shutil

def remove_contents(path):
    for c in os.listdir(path):
        full_path = os.path.join(path, c)
        if os.path.isfile(full_path):
            os.remove(full_path)
        else:
            shutil.rmtree(full_path)

the easiest way to delete all files in a folder/remove all files

import os
files = os.listdir(yourFilePath)
for f in files:
    os.remove(yourFilePath + f)

This should do the trick just using the OS module to list and then remove!

import os
DIR = os.list('Folder')
for i in range(len(DIR)):
    os.remove('Folder'+chr(92)+i)

Worked for me, any problems let me know!

I have a script that needs to do some stuff based on file creation & modification dates but has to run on Linux & Windows.

What’s the best cross-platform way to get file creation & modification date/times in Python?

Getting some sort of modification date in a cross-platform way is easy – just call os.path.getmtime(path) and you’ll get the Unix timestamp of when the file at path was last modified.

Getting file creation dates, on the other hand, is fiddly and platform-dependent, differing even between the three big OSes:

• On Windows, a file’s ctime (documented at https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/14h5k7ff.aspx) stores its creation date. You can access this in Python through os.path.getctime() or the .st_ctime attribute of the result of a call to os.stat(). This won’t work on Unix, where the ctime is the last time that the file’s attributes or content were changed.
• On Mac, as well as some other Unix-based OSes, you can use the .st_birthtime attribute of the result of a call to os.stat().

• On Linux, this is currently impossible, at least without writing a C extension for Python. Although some file systems commonly used with Linux do store creation dates (for example, ext4 stores them in st_crtime) , the Linux kernel offers no way of accessing them; in particular, the structs it returns from stat() calls in C, as of the latest kernel version, don’t contain any creation date fields. You can also see that the identifier st_crtime doesn’t currently feature anywhere in the Python source. At least if you’re on ext4, the data is attached to the inodes in the file system, but there’s no convenient way of accessing it.

  The next-best thing on Linux is to access the file’s mtime, through either os.path.getmtime() or the .st_mtime attribute of an os.stat() result. This will give you the last time the file’s content was modified, which may be adequate for some use cases.

Putting this all together, cross-platform code should look something like this…

import os
import platform

def creation_date(path_to_file):
    """
    Try to get the date that a file was created, falling back to when it was
    last modified if that isn't possible.
    See http://stackoverflow.com/a/39501288/1709587 for explanation.
    """
    if platform.system() == 'Windows':
        return os.path.getctime(path_to_file)
    else:
        stat = os.stat(path_to_file)
        try:
            return stat.st_birthtime
        except AttributeError:
            # We're probably on Linux. No easy way to get creation dates here,
            # so we'll settle for when its content was last modified.
            return stat.st_mtime

You have a couple of choices. For one, you can use the os.path.getmtime and os.path.getctime functions:

import os.path, time
print("last modified: %s" % time.ctime(os.path.getmtime(file)))
print("created: %s" % time.ctime(os.path.getctime(file)))

Your other option is to use os.stat:

import os, time
(mode, ino, dev, nlink, uid, gid, size, atime, mtime, ctime) = os.stat(file)
print("last modified: %s" % time.ctime(mtime))

Note: ctime() does not refer to creation time on *nix systems, but rather the last time the inode data changed. (thanks to kojiro for making that fact more clear in the comments by providing a link to an interesting blog post)

The best function to use for this is os.path.getmtime(). Internally, this just uses os.stat(filename).st_mtime.

The datetime module is the best manipulating timestamps, so you can get the modification date as a datetime object like this:

import os
import datetime
def modification_date(filename):
    t = os.path.getmtime(filename)
    return datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(t)

Usage example:

>>> d = modification_date('/var/log/syslog')
>>> print d
2009-10-06 10:50:01
>>> print repr(d)
datetime.datetime(2009, 10, 6, 10, 50, 1)

os.stat https://docs.python.org/2/library/stat.html#module-stat

edit: In newer code you should probably use os.path.getmtime() (thanks Christian Oudard)
but note that it returns a floating point value of time_t with fraction seconds (if your OS supports it)

There are two methods to get the mod time, os.path.getmtime() or os.stat(), but the ctime is not reliable cross-platform (see below).

os.path.getmtime()

getmtime(path)
Return the time of last modification of path. The return value is a number giving the number of seconds since the epoch (see the time module). Raise os.error if the file does not exist or is inaccessible. New in version 1.5.2. Changed in version 2.3: If os.stat_float_times() returns True, the result is a floating point number.

os.stat()

stat(path)
Perform a stat() system call on the given path. The return value is an object whose attributes correspond to the members of the stat structure, namely: st_mode (protection bits), st_ino (inode number), st_dev (device), st_nlink (number of hard links), st_uid (user ID of owner), st_gid (group ID of owner), st_size (size of file, in bytes), st_atime (time of most recent access), st_mtime (time of most recent content modification), st_ctime (platform dependent; time of most recent metadata change on Unix, or the time of creation on Windows):

>>> import os
>>> statinfo = os.stat('somefile.txt')
>>> statinfo
(33188, 422511L, 769L, 1, 1032, 100, 926L, 1105022698,1105022732, 1105022732)
>>> statinfo.st_size
926L
>>> 

In the above example you would use statinfo.st_mtime or statinfo.st_ctime to get the mtime and ctime, respectively.

In Python 3.4 and above, you can use the object oriented pathlib module interface which includes wrappers for much of the os module. Here is an example of getting the file stats.

>>> import pathlib
>>> fname = pathlib.Path('test.py')
>>> assert fname.exists(), f'No such file: {fname}'  # check that the file exists
>>> print(fname.stat())
os.stat_result(st_mode=33206, st_ino=5066549581564298, st_dev=573948050, st_nlink=1, st_uid=0, st_gid=0, st_size=413, st_atime=1523480272, st_mtime=1539787740, st_ctime=1523480272)

For more information about what os.stat_result contains, refer to the documentation. For the modification time you want fname.stat().st_mtime:

>>> import datetime
>>> mtime = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(fname.stat().st_mtime)
>>> print(mtime)
datetime.datetime(2018, 10, 17, 10, 49, 0, 249980)

If you want the creation time on Windows, or the most recent metadata change on Unix, you would use fname.stat().st_ctime:

>>> ctime = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(fname.stat().st_ctime)
>>> print(ctime)
datetime.datetime(2018, 4, 11, 16, 57, 52, 151953)

This article has more helpful info and examples for the pathlib module.

os.stat returns a named tuple with st_mtime and st_ctime attributes. The modification time is st_mtime on both platforms; unfortunately, on Windows, ctime means “creation time”, whereas on POSIX it means “change time”. I’m not aware of any way to get the creation time on POSIX platforms.

import os, time, datetime

file = "somefile.txt"
print(file)

print("Modified")
print(os.stat(file)[-2])
print(os.stat(file).st_mtime)
print(os.path.getmtime(file))

print()

print("Created")
print(os.stat(file)[-1])
print(os.stat(file).st_ctime)
print(os.path.getctime(file))

print()

modified = os.path.getmtime(file)
print("Date modified: "+time.ctime(modified))
print("Date modified:",datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(modified))
year,month,day,hour,minute,second=time.localtime(modified)[:-3]
print("Date modified: %02d/%02d/%d %02d:%02d:%02d"%(day,month,year,hour,minute,second))

print()

created = os.path.getctime(file)
print("Date created: "+time.ctime(created))
print("Date created:",datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(created))
year,month,day,hour,minute,second=time.localtime(created)[:-3]
print("Date created: %02d/%02d/%d %02d:%02d:%02d"%(day,month,year,hour,minute,second))

prints

somefile.txt
Modified
1429613446
1429613446.0
1429613446.0

Created
1517491049
1517491049.28306
1517491049.28306

Date modified: Tue Apr 21 11:50:46 2015
Date modified: 2015-04-21 11:50:46
Date modified: 21/04/2015 11:50:46

Date created: Thu Feb  1 13:17:29 2018
Date created: 2018-02-01 13:17:29.283060
Date created: 01/02/2018 13:17:29

>>> import os
>>> os.stat('feedparser.py').st_mtime
1136961142.0
>>> os.stat('feedparser.py').st_ctime
1222664012.233
>>> 

If following symbolic links is not important, you can also use the os.lstat builtin.

>>> os.lstat("2048.py")
posix.stat_result(st_mode=33188, st_ino=4172202, st_dev=16777218L, st_nlink=1, st_uid=501, st_gid=20, st_size=2078, st_atime=1423378041, st_mtime=1423377552, st_ctime=1423377553)
>>> os.lstat("2048.py").st_atime
1423378041.0

It may worth taking a look at the crtime library which implements cross-platform access to the file creation time.

from crtime import get_crtimes_in_dir

for fname, date in get_crtimes_in_dir(".", raise_on_error=True, as_epoch=False):
    print(fname, date)
    # file_a.py Mon Mar 18 20:51:18 CET 2019

os.stat does include the creation time. There’s just no definition of st_anything for the element of os.stat() that contains the time.

So try this:

os.stat('feedparser.py')[8]

Compare that with your create date on the file in ls -lah

They should be the same.

I was able to get creation time on posix by running the system’s stat command and parsing the output.

commands.getoutput('stat FILENAME').split('\"')[7]

Running stat outside of python from Terminal (OS X) returned:

805306374 3382786932 -rwx------ 1 km staff 0 1098083 "Aug 29 12:02:05 2013" "Aug 29 12:02:05 2013" "Aug 29 12:02:20 2013" "Aug 27 12:35:28 2013" 61440 2150 0 testfile.txt

… where the fourth datetime is the file creation (rather than ctime change time as other comments noted).

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?

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)

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))

import shutil
shutil.rmtree(dest, ignore_errors=True)

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 dir content, remove this line

where pth is a pathlib.Path instance. Nice, but may not be the fastest.

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)

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

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")

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>&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])

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) < 400000:  # ≈ 400kb
        send2trash(dir)
    print(dir, "dir deleted")

I’d like to add a “pure pathlib” approach:

from pathlib import Path
from typing import Union

def del_dir(target: Union[Path, str], only_if_empty: bool = False):
    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 >= 3.6)
• It’s fast and memory-efficient: No recursion stack, no need to start a subprocess
• 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.

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)

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

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.

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)

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.

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.

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)

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.

I am writing a Python script in Windows. I want to do something based on the file size. For example, if the size is greater than 0, I will send an email to somebody, otherwise continue to other things.

How do I check the file size?

You need the st_size property of the object returned by os.stat. You can get it by either using pathlib (Python 3.4+):

>>> from pathlib import Path
>>> Path('somefile.txt').stat()
os.stat_result(st_mode=33188, st_ino=6419862, st_dev=16777220, st_nlink=1, st_uid=501, st_gid=20, st_size=1564, st_atime=1584299303, st_mtime=1584299400, st_ctime=1584299400)
>>> Path('somefile.txt').stat().st_size
1564

or using os.stat:

>>> import os
>>> os.stat('somefile.txt')
os.stat_result(st_mode=33188, st_ino=6419862, st_dev=16777220, st_nlink=1, st_uid=501, st_gid=20, st_size=1564, st_atime=1584299303, st_mtime=1584299400, st_ctime=1584299400)
>>> os.stat('somefile.txt').st_size
1564

Output is in bytes.

Using os.path.getsize:

>>> import os
>>> b = os.path.getsize("/path/isa_005.mp3")
>>> b
2071611

The output is in bytes.

The other answers work for real files, but if you need something that works for “file-like objects”, try this:

# f is a file-like object. 
f.seek(0, os.SEEK_END)
size = f.tell()

It works for real files and StringIO’s, in my limited testing. (Python 2.7.3.) The “file-like object” API isn’t really a rigorous interface, of course, but the API documentation suggests that file-like objects should support seek() and tell().

Edit

Another difference between this and os.stat() is that you can stat() a file even if you don’t have permission to read it. Obviously the seek/tell approach won’t work unless you have read permission.

Edit 2

At Jonathon’s suggestion, here’s a paranoid version. (The version above leaves the file pointer at the end of the file, so if you were to try to read from the file, you’d get zero bytes back!)

# f is a file-like object. 
old_file_position = f.tell()
f.seek(0, os.SEEK_END)
size = f.tell()
f.seek(old_file_position, os.SEEK_SET)

import os


def convert_bytes(num):
    """
    this function will convert bytes to MB.... GB... etc
    """
    for x in ['bytes', 'KB', 'MB', 'GB', 'TB']:
        if num < 1024.0:
            return "%3.1f %s" % (num, x)
        num /= 1024.0


def file_size(file_path):
    """
    this function will return the file size
    """
    if os.path.isfile(file_path):
        file_info = os.stat(file_path)
        return convert_bytes(file_info.st_size)


# Lets check the file size of MS Paint exe 
# or you can use any file path
file_path = r"C:\Windows\System32\mspaint.exe"
print file_size(file_path)

Result:

6.1 MB

Using pathlib (added in Python 3.4 or a backport available on PyPI):

from pathlib import Path
file = Path() / 'doc.txt'  # or Path('./doc.txt')
size = file.stat().st_size

This is really only an interface around os.stat, but using pathlib provides an easy way to access other file related operations.

There is a bitshift trick I use if I want to to convert from bytes to any other unit. If you do a right shift by 10 you basically shift it by an order (multiple).

Example: 5GB are 5368709120 bytes

print (5368709120 >> 10)  # 5242880 kilobytes (kB)
print (5368709120 >> 20 ) # 5120 megabytes (MB)
print (5368709120 >> 30 ) # 5 gigabytes (GB)

Strictly sticking to the question, the Python code (+ pseudo-code) would be:

import os
file_path = r"<path to your file>"
if os.stat(file_path).st_size > 0:
    <send an email to somebody>
else:
    <continue to other things>

#Get file size , print it , process it...
#Os.stat will provide the file size in (.st_size) property. 
#The file size will be shown in bytes.

import os

fsize=os.stat('filepath')
print('size:' + fsize.st_size.__str__())

#check if the file size is less than 10 MB

if fsize.st_size < 10000000:
    process it ....

we have two options Both include importing os module

1) import os as os.stat() function returns an object which contains so many headers including file created time and last modified time etc.. among them st_size() gives the exact size of the file.

os.stat(“filename”).st_size()

2) import os In this, we have to provide the exact file path(absolute path), not a relative path.

os.path.getsize(“path of file”)