Delete pdf files in folders and subfolders with python?

Question

I try to delete 300 pdf files. All the pdf files as different names, and they all spread in one big folder that divided to a lot of sub folders and sub sub folders. How can I do it with python (I work with python 2.7.8)?

Answer 1

Using shutil.rmtree, you can delete directories recursively.

import shutil
shutil.rmtree('/path/to/directory/that/contains/pdfs')

If the directory contians other files that is not pdf file, use following instead (which use os.walk to traverse the directories recursively, and os.remove/os.unlink to remove the pdf file).

import os

for parent, dirnames, filenames in os.walk('/path/to/the/directory'):
    for fn in filenames:
        if fn.lower().endswith('.pdf'):
            os.remove(os.path.join(parent, fn))

Answer 2

If all you want is delete just the pdf file you can use the os.walk function and fnmatch.fnmatch function.

import os
from fnmatch import fnmatch

for dirpath, dirnames, filenames in os.walk(os.curdir):
    for file in filenames:
        if fnmatch(file, '*.pdf'):
            os.remove(os.path.join(dirpath, file))