rmdir problem

[Tim Golden]

royG wrote:
> hi
> i am checking if a directory exists and if it does i want to delete it
> and its contents.then i want to create the directory before creating
> files in it.
> 
> def myfolderops():
>     testdir='..\mytestdir'
>     #if dir exist remove it
>     if isdir(testdir):
>         rmdir(testdir)
>     #again create directory
>     mkdir(testdir)
> 
> I am working on WinXP and logged in as admin in WinXP. when there is
> no dir called '..\mytestdir' or an empty dir  this code works removing
> and creating the directory.but if the directory exists with contents
> already then it causes an error 145 when rmdir is executed.the message
> says 'directory is not empty'
>  what should i do  to correct this?
> (i need to remove the dir with its contents because each time i will
> be putting diff files into it and donot want them to be mixed with old
> files)

Two things:

1) Use raw strings (r"..\blah") or forward slashes ("../blah") when
messing with path names under windows.

2) Check out the shutils module:

   http://docs.python.org/lib/module-shutil.html


TJG