[Tutor] checking and deleting oldest

[Danny Yoo]

On Sun, 15 Dec 2002, Kyle Babich wrote:

> I'm trying to count the number of folders in a specific file and if that
> number is above a certain amount then the oldest file is deleted.

Hi Kyle,


I think you meant to say this instead:

"""I'm trying to count the number of files in a specific folder and if
that number is above a certain amount then the oldest file is deleted."""



> The first part is easy but how would I check the dates and delete the
> oldest file?

One approach could be to take a list of those files, and then sort them by
date.  Once we have a sorted list of files, it's fairly easy to pick out
either the newest or oldest file, since they'll be at the edges of our
list.


People on Tutor talked a little about sorting a week ago; you might find
this thread useful:

    http://mail.python.org/pipermail/tutor/2002-December/019252.html
    http://mail.python.org/pipermail/tutor/2002-December/019219.html

as well as the Sorting HOWTO:

    http://www.amk.ca/python/howto/sorting/sorting.html

The big trick is to write a comparison function that tells sort() how
to order files by date.  But for that, there's a function in
os.path()  called "getmtime()", which tells us when a file was last
modified.

    http://www.python.org/doc/lib/module-os.path.html


Try working it out; if you run into problems, please feel free to ask more
questions.  Good luck to you!