Python3 project remove __pycache__ folders and .pyc files

Question

You can do it manually with the next command:

find . | grep -E "(__pycache__|\.pyc|\.pyo$)" | xargs rm -rf

This will remove all *.pyc files and __pycache__ directories recursively in the current directory.

macOS & Linux

BSD's find implementation on macOS is different from GNU find - this is compatible with both BSD and GNU find. Start with a globbing implementation, using -name and the -o for or - Put this function in your .bashrc file:

pyclean () {
    find . -type f -name '*.py[co]' -delete -o -type d -name __pycache__ -delete
}

Then cd to the directory you want to recursively clean, and type pyclean.

GNU find-only

This is a GNU find, only (i.e. Linux) solution, but I feel it's a little nicer with the regex:

pyclean () {
    find . -regex '^.*\(__pycache__\|\.py[co]\)$' -delete
}

Any platform, using Python 3

On Windows, you probably don't even have find. You do, however, probably have Python 3, which starting in 3.4 has the convenient pathlib module:

python3 -Bc "import pathlib; [p.unlink() for p in pathlib.Path('.').rglob('*.py[co]')]"
python3 -Bc "import pathlib; [p.rmdir() for p in pathlib.Path('.').rglob('__pycache__')]"

The -B flag tells Python not to write .pyc files. (See also the PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE environment variable.)

The above abuses list comprehensions for looping, but when using python -c, style is rather a secondary concern. Alternatively we could abuse (for example) __import__:

python3 -Bc "for p in __import__('pathlib').Path('.').rglob('*.py[co]'): p.unlink()"
python3 -Bc "for p in __import__('pathlib').Path('.').rglob('__pycache__'): p.rmdir()"

Critique of an answer

The top answer used to say:

find . | grep -E "(__pycache__|\.pyc|\.pyo$)" | xargs rm -rf

This would seem to be less efficient because it uses three processes. find takes a regular expression, so we don't need a separate invocation of grep. Similarly, it has -delete, so we don't need a separate invocation of rm —and contrary to a comment here, it will delete non-empty directories so long as they get emptied by virtue of the regular expression match.

From the xargs man page:

find /tmp -depth -name core -type f -delete

Find files named core in or below the directory /tmp and delete them, but more efficiently than in the previous example (because we avoid the need to use fork(2) and exec(2) to launch rm and we don't need the extra xargs process).

I found the answer myself when I mistyped pyclean as pycclean:

    No command 'pycclean' found, did you mean:
     Command 'py3clean' from package 'python3-minimal' (main)
     Command 'pyclean' from package 'python-minimal' (main)
    pycclean: command not found

Running py3clean . cleaned it up very nicely.

Since this is a Python 3 project, you only need to delete __pycache__ directories -- all .pyc/.pyo files are inside them.

find . -type d -name __pycache__ -exec rm -r {} \+

or its simpler form,

find . -type d -name __pycache__ -delete

which didn't work for me for some reason (files were deleted but directories weren't), so I'm including both for the sake of completeness.

---

Alternatively, if you're doing this in a directory that's under revision control, you can tell the RCS to ignore __pycache__ folders recursively. Then, at the required moment, just clean up all the ignored files. This will likely be more convenient because there'll probably be more to clean up than just __pycache__.

If you need a permanent solution for keeping Python cache files out of your project directories:

Starting with Python 3.8 you can use the environment variable PYTHONPYCACHEPREFIX to define a cache directory for Python.

From the Python docs:

If this is set, Python will write .pyc files in a mirror directory tree at this path, instead of in pycache directories within the source tree. This is equivalent to specifying the -X pycache_prefix=PATH option.

Example

If you add the following line to your ./profile in Linux:

export PYTHONPYCACHEPREFIX="$HOME/.cache/cpython/"

Python won't create the annoying __pycache__ directories in your project directory, instead it will put all of them under ~/.cache/cpython/

The command I've used:

find . -type d -name "__pycache__" -exec rm -r {} +

Explains:

1. First finds all __pycache__ folders in current directory.

2. Execute rm -r {} + to delete each folder at step above ({} signify for placeholder and + to end the command)

Edited 1:

I'm using Linux, to reuse the command I've added the line below to the ~/.bashrc file

alias rm-pycache='find . -type d -name  "__pycache__" -exec rm -r {} +'

Edited 2: If you're using VS Code, you don't need to remove __pycache__ manually. You can add the snippet below to settings.json file. After that, VS Code will hide all __pycache__ folders for you

"files.exclude": {
     "**/__pycache__": true
}

Hope it helps !!!

This is my alias that works both with Python 2 and Python 3 removing all .pyc .pyo files as well __pycache__ directories recursively.

alias pyclean='find . -name "*.py[co]" -o -name __pycache__ -exec rm -rf {} +'