[Tutor] Deleting specified files using a python program...help with code?

[Cédric Lucantis]

Le Sunday 29 June 2008 17:13:34 Saad Javed, vous avez écrit :
> I transfer files a lot between my windows and linux partitions...these
> folders sometimes contain *.db and *.ini files which are not recognized or
> used by linux. So i tried to write a program to crawl through my home dir
> and remove these files...I'm *very* new to programming and python so please
> be gentle. Here is the code:
>
> *import os
>
> list = ['*.ini', '*.db']
>
> for root, dirs, files in os.walk('/home/saad'):
> **for list in files:
> **os.remove(os.path.join('root', 'list'))
> print 'done'*
>
> Unfortunately its a bit too efficient and nearly wiped my home dir before i
> manually killed it. Again...treat me like a super noob.
>

Hum, just a little tip first: create a dummy file hierarchy to test your 
program, and only run it on your home when you're sure it will work. Of 
course backing up your home dir might help too :)

You're removing all files found by walk() without checking if they match the 
patterns in list, so your script just removes every files under /home/saad.

I'd suggest something like this:

import os
import glob

input_dir = '...'
pattern_list = ['*.ini', '*.db']

for root, dirs, files in os.walk(input_dir) :
	for pattern in pattern_list :
		full_pattern = os.path.join(root, pattern)
		for filename in glob.glob(full_pattern) :
			os.remove(filename)

or you can do something similar with the fnmatch module. See

http://docs.python.org/lib/module-glob.html
http://docs.python.org/lib/module-fnmatch.html

-- 
Cédric Lucantis