Easiest way to rm -rf in Python

Question

What is the easiest way to do the equivalent of rm -rf in Python?

Answer 1

import shutil shutil.rmtree("dir-you-want-to-remove") 

Answer 2

While useful, rmtree isn't equivalent: it errors out if you try to remove a single file, which rm -f does not (see example below).

To get around this, you'll need to check whether your path is a file or a directory, and act accordingly. Something like this should do the trick:

import os import shutil  def rm_r(path):     if os.path.isdir(path) and not os.path.islink(path):         shutil.rmtree(path)     elif os.path.exists(path):         os.remove(path) 

Note: this function will not handle character or block devices (that would require using the stat module).

Example in difference of between rm -f and Python's shutils.rmtree

$ mkdir rmtest $ cd rmtest/ $ echo "stuff" > myfile $ ls myfile $ rm -rf myfile  $ ls $ echo "stuff" > myfile $ ls myfile $ python Python 2.7.1+ (r271:86832, Apr 11 2011, 18:13:53)  [GCC 4.5.2] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import shutil >>> shutil.rmtree('myfile') Traceback (most recent call last):   File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>   File "/usr/lib/python2.7/shutil.py", line 236, in rmtree     onerror(os.listdir, path, sys.exc_info())   File "/usr/lib/python2.7/shutil.py", line 234, in rmtree     names = os.listdir(path) OSError: [Errno 20] Not a directory: 'myfile' 

Edit: handle symlinks; note limitations as per @pevik's comment