Deleting Files in Python

Question

I want to delete all files with the extension bak in a directory. How can I do that in Python?

Answer 1

First glob them, then unlink.

Answer 2

Via os.listdir and os.remove:

import os

filelist = [ f for f in os.listdir(".") if f.endswith(".bak") ]
for f in filelist:
    os.remove(f)

Or via glob.glob:

import glob, os

filelist = glob.glob("*.bak")
for f in filelist:
    os.remove(f)

Be sure to be in the correct directory, eventually using os.chdir.

Answer 3

Use os.chdir to change directory . Use glob.glob to generate a list of file names which end it '.bak'. The elements of the list are just strings.

Then you could use os.unlink to remove the files. (PS. os.unlink and os.remove are synonyms for the same function.)

#!/usr/bin/env python
import glob
import os
directory='/path/to/dir'
os.chdir(directory)
files=glob.glob('*.bak')
for filename in files:
    os.unlink(filename)

Answer 4

you can create a function. Add maxdepth as you like for traversing subdirectories.

def findNremove(path,pattern,maxdepth=1):
    cpath=path.count(os.sep)
    for r,d,f in os.walk(path):
        if r.count(os.sep) - cpath <maxdepth:
            for files in f:
                if files.endswith(pattern):
                    try:
                        print "Removing %s" % (os.path.join(r,files))
                        #os.remove(os.path.join(r,files))
                    except Exception,e:
                        print e
                    else:
                        print "%s removed" % (os.path.join(r,files))

path=os.path.join("/home","dir1","dir2")
findNremove(path,".bak")