Deleting a file or folder in Python

There are multiple ways to Delete a File in Python but the best ways are the following:

1. os.remove() removes a file.
2. os.unlink() removes a file. it is a Unix name of remove() method.
3. shutil.rmtree() deletes a directory and all its contents.
4. pathlib.Path.unlink() deletes a single file The pathlib module is available in Python 3.4 and above.

os.remove()

Example 1: Basic Example to Remove a File Using os.remove() Method.

import os
os.remove("test_file.txt")
print("File removed successfully")

Example 2: Checking if File Exists using os.path.isfile and Deleting it With os.remove

import os
#checking if file exist or not
if(os.path.isfile("test.txt")):
    #os.remove() function to remove the file
    os.remove("test.txt")
    #Printing the confirmation message of deletion
    print("File Deleted successfully")
else:
print("File does not exist")
#Showing the message instead of throwig an error

Example 3: Python Program to Delete all files with a specific extension

import os 
from os import listdir
my_path = 'C:\Python Pool\Test\'
for file_name in listdir(my_path):
    if file_name.endswith('.txt'):
        os.remove(my_path + file_name)

Example 4: Python Program to Delete All Files Inside a Folder

To delete all files inside a particular directory, you simply have to use the * symbol as the pattern string. #Importing os and glob modules import os, glob #Loop Through the folder projects all files and deleting them one by one for file in glob.glob("pythonpool/*"): os.remove(file) print("Deleted " + str(file))

os.unlink()

os.unlink() is an alias or another name of os.remove() . As in the Unix OS remove is also known as unlink. Note: All the functionalities and syntax is the same of os.unlink() and os.remove(). Both of them are used to delete the Python file path. Both are methods in the os module in Python’s standard libraries which performs the deletion function.

shutil.rmtree()

Example 1: Python Program to Delete a File Using shutil.rmtree()

import shutil 
import os 
# location 
location = "E:/Projects/PythonPool/"
# directory 
dir = "Test"
# path 
path = os.path.join(location, dir) 
# removing directory 
shutil.rmtree(path) 

Example 2: Python Program to Delete a File Using shutil.rmtree()

import shutil 
import os 
location = "E:/Projects/PythonPool/"
dir = "Test"    
path = os.path.join(location, dir) 
shutil.rmtree(path) 

pathlib.Path.rmdir() to remove Empty Directory

Pathlib module provides different ways to interact with your files. Rmdir is one of the path functions which allows you to delete an empty folder. Firstly, you need to select the Path() for the directory, and then calling rmdir() method will check the folder size. If it’s empty, it’ll delete it.

This is a good way to deleting empty folders without any fear of losing actual data.

from pathlib import Path
q = Path('foldername')
q.rmdir()

import os

folder = '/Path/to/yourDir/'
fileList = os.listdir(folder)

for f in fileList:
    filePath = folder + '/'+f

    if os.path.isfile(filePath):
        os.remove(filePath)

    elif os.path.isdir(filePath):
        newFileList = os.listdir(filePath)
        for f1 in newFileList:
            insideFilePath = filePath + '/' + f1

            if os.path.isfile(insideFilePath):
                os.remove(insideFilePath)

This is my function for deleting dirs. The "path" requires the full pathname.

import os

def rm_dir(path):
    cwd = os.getcwd()
    if not os.path.exists(os.path.join(cwd, path)):
        return False
    os.chdir(os.path.join(cwd, path))

    for file in os.listdir():
        print("file = " + file)
        os.remove(file)
    print(cwd)
    os.chdir(cwd)
    os.rmdir(os.path.join(cwd, path))

For deleting files:

os.unlink(path, *, dir_fd=None)

or

os.remove(path, *, dir_fd=None)

Both functions are semantically same. This functions removes (deletes) the file path. If path is not a file and it is directory, then exception is raised.

For deleting folders:

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

or

os.rmdir(path, *, dir_fd=None)

In order to remove whole directory trees, shutil.rmtree() can be used. os.rmdir only works when the directory is empty and exists.

For deleting folders recursively towards parent:

os.removedirs(name)

It remove every empty parent directory with self until parent which has some content

ex. os.removedirs('abc/xyz/pqr') will remove the directories by order 'abc/xyz/pqr', 'abc/xyz' and 'abc' if they are empty.

For more info check official doc: os.unlink , os.remove, os.rmdir , shutil.rmtree, os.removedirs

To remove all files in folder

import os
import glob

files = glob.glob(os.path.join('path/to/folder/*'))
files = glob.glob(os.path.join('path/to/folder/*.csv')) // It will give all csv files in folder
for file in files:
    os.remove(file)

To remove all folders in a directory

from shutil import rmtree
import os

// os.path.join()  # current working directory.

for dirct in os.listdir(os.path.join('path/to/folder')):
    rmtree(os.path.join('path/to/folder',dirct))

To avoid the TOCTOU issue highlighted by Éric Araujo's comment, you can catch an exception to call the correct method:

def remove_file_or_dir(path: str) -> None:
    """ Remove a file or directory """
    try:
        shutil.rmtree(path)
    except NotADirectoryError:
        os.remove(path)

Since shutil.rmtree() will only remove directories and os.remove() or os.unlink() will only remove files.

My personal preference is to work with pathlib objects - it offers a more pythonic and less error-prone way to interact with the filesystem, especially if You develop cross-platform code.

In that case, You might use pathlib3x - it offers a backport of the latest (at the date of writing this answer Python 3.10.a0) Python pathlib for Python 3.6 or newer, and a few additional functions like "copy", "copy2", "copytree", "rmtree" etc ...

It also wraps shutil.rmtree:

$> python -m pip install pathlib3x
$> python
>>> import pathlib3x as pathlib

# delete a directory tree
>>> my_dir_to_delete=pathlib.Path('c:/temp/some_dir')
>>> my_dir_to_delete.rmtree(ignore_errors=True)

# delete a file
>>> my_file_to_delete=pathlib.Path('c:/temp/some_file.txt')
>>> my_file_to_delete.unlink(missing_ok=True)

you can find it on github or PyPi

^{Disclaimer: I'm the author of the pathlib3x library.}

Majorly there are 4 methods to remove file from folder

Method 1

os.remove()

Get code of other 3 methods

I recommend using subprocess if writing a beautiful and readable code is your cup of tea:

import subprocess
subprocess.Popen("rm -r my_dir", shell=True)

And if you are not a software engineer, then maybe consider using Jupyter; you can simply type bash commands:

!rm -r my_dir

Traditionally, you use shutil:

import shutil
shutil.rmtree(my_dir)