Delete certain files from a directory using regex regarding their file names

Question

Here I am making attempts to create a code what would delete files in a folder according to the mask. All files what include 17 should be removed File name format is ??_????17*.*, where ? - Any symbol 1..n,A..z, _ and 17 - are in any files (others contain 18, as well) and its extension doesn't matter. Certain example of a file AB_DEFG17Something.Anything - Copy (2).txt

import os
import re

dir_name = "/Python/Test_folder"         # open the folder and read files
testfolder = os.listdir(dir_name)

def matching(r, s):                      # condition if there's nothing to match
match = re.search(r, s)
if match:
return match.group()
return "Files don't exist!"

matching(r'^\w\w\[_]\w\w\w\w\[1]\[7]\w+\[.]\w+', testfolder)  # matching the file's mask

for item in testfolder.index(matching):
if item.name(matching, s):
os.remove(os.path.join(dir_name, item))

# format of filenames not converted :  ??_????17*.* 
# convert for python separarately   :  [\w][\w][_\w][\w][\w][\w]\[1]\[7][\w]+[\.][\w]+
# ? - Any symbol 1..n,A..z \w repeating is * 
# * - Any number of symbols 1..n, A..z
# _ and 17 - in any files `

There are a few mistakes, as well.

File "D:\Python\Test_folder\Remover v2.py", line 14, in matching(r'\w\w[_]\w\w\w\w[1][7]\w+[.]\w+', testfolder) # matching the file's mask  File "D:\Python\Test_folder\Remover v2.py", line 9, in matching match = re.search(r, s) File "c:\Program Files (x86)\Wing IDE Personal 6.0\bin\runtime-python2.7\Lib\re.py", line 146, in search return _compile(pattern, flags).search(string)

I'm a beginner and with amateurish approach would like to get experience in PY, parallel learning details. What am I doing wrong? Any help would be useful. Thx

Answer 1

Don't reinvent the wheel, rather use glob() instead:

import os
from glob import glob

for file in glob('/Python/Test_folder/AB_CDEF17*.*'):
    os.remove(file)