deltree function

[François Pinard]

[Arkaitz]

> Is there a deltree-like function in the Python standard library?  I have
> been looking at os.removedirs(), but it won't delete non-empty
> directories.  I'd like to delete a whole tree, with files and directories
> mixed, as rm -rf does in Unix.  Any hint?

Hello, Arkaitz.  As others suggested, the simplest is to execute the shell
command `rm -rf' from within your Python program.

However, if I wanted a pure Python solution, I would slightly modify a
script I wrote to clean out a file hierarchy from the empty directories
it contains, which script is attached to this message.  The modification,
untested, would be to add a loop at the beginning of the `walker' script,
so it starts like this:

def walker(dummy, directory, bases):
    for base in bases[:]:
        name = os.path.join(directory, base)
        if os.path.isfile(name) or os.path.islink(name):
             os.remove(name)
             bases.remove(base)
    while not bases:
        # etc.

Maybe that some code would also be needed to handle the cases where
permissions are not sufficient to remove files or directories.

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#!/usr/bin/env python
# Copyright ? 2000 Progiciels Bourbeau-Pinard inc.
# Fran?ois Pinard <pinard at iro.umontreal.ca>, 2000.

"""\
Remove empty directories in the given directory hierarchies.

Usage: rmdir-empty [DIRECTORY]...

If not directory is given, the current directory is implied.
"""

import os, sys

def main(*arguments):
    if arguments:
        for argument in arguments:
            os.path.walk(argument, walker, None)
    else:
        os.path.walk('.', walker, None)

def walker(dummy, directory, bases):
    while not bases:
        sys.stdout.write("Removing %s\n" % directory)
        os.rmdir(directory)
        directory, base = os.path.split(directory)
        if not directory or not os.path.isdir(directory):
            break
        bases = os.listdir(directory)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    apply(main, sys.argv[1:])
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-- 
Fran?ois Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard