How do I delete a possibly non-empty dir in Python.
The directory may have nested subdirectories many levels deep.
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3 Answers
Use shutil.rmtree:
import shutil
shutil.rmtree(path)
See the documentation for details of how to handle and/or ignore errors.
Comments
The standard library includes shutil.rmtree for this. By default,
shutil.rmtree(path) # errors if dir not empty
will give OSError: [Errno 66] Directory not empty: <your/path>.
You can delete the directory and its contents anyway by ignoring the error:
shutil.rmtree(role_fs_path, ignore_errors=True)
You can perform more sophisticated error handling by also passing onerrror=<some function(function, path, excinfo)>.
5 Comments
ostrokach
ignore_errors=True means it does not remove the directory.
Marc Condon
ignore_errors=True was the tickket
IlliakaillI
oh no, what a terrible name for parameter :(
wheeleruniverse
shutil.rmtree(path) will not give errors if the directory is empty in python 3.8, so this probably changed since you posted 6 years ago. Just wanted to update for other people viewing this now.
Max Segal
shutil.rmtree(path) doesn't throw error if the directory not empty (python 3.7.9)You want shutil.rmtree
shutil.rmtree(path[, ignore_errors[, onerror]])
Delete an entire directory tree; path must point to a directory (but not a symbolic link to a directory). If ignore_errors is true, errors resulting from failed removals will be ignored; if false or omitted, such errors are handled by calling a handler specified by onerror or, if that is omitted, they raise an exception.
