Unable to remove zipped file after unzipping

Question

I'm attempting to remove a zipped file after unzipping the contents on windows. The contents can be stored in a folder structure in the zip. I'm using the with statement and thought this would close the file-like object (source var) and zip file. I've removed lines of code relating to saving the source file.

import zipfile
import os

zipped_file = r'D:\test.zip'

with zipfile.ZipFile(zipped_file) as zip_file:
    for member in zip_file.namelist():
        filename = os.path.basename(member)
        if not filename:
            continue
        source = zip_file.open(member)

os.remove(zipped_file)

The error returned is:

WindowsError: [Error 32] The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process: 'D:\\test.zip'

I've tried:

• looping over the os.remove line in case it's a slight timing issue
• Using close explicitly instead of the with statment
• Attempted on local C drive and mapped D Drive

Answer 1

instead of passing in a string to the ZipFile constructor, you can pass it a file like object:

import zipfile
import os

zipped_file = r'D:\test.zip'

with open(zipped_file, mode="r") as file:
    zip_file = zipfile.ZipFile(file)
    for member in zip_file.namelist():
        filename = os.path.basename(member)
        if not filename:
            continue
        source = zip_file.open(member)

os.remove(zipped_file)

Answer 2

You are opening files inside the zip... which create a file lock on the whole zip file. close the inner file open first... via source.close() at the end of your loop

import zipfile
import os

zipped_file = r'D:\test.zip'

with zipfile.ZipFile(zipped_file) as zip_file:
    for member in zip_file.namelist():
        filename = os.path.basename(member)
        if not filename:
            continue
        source = zip_file.open(member)
    source.close()

os.remove(zipped_file)