Python Forum

Hello all,

I'm relatively new to Python, and I'm enjoying the learning process and the info I find here!

I am writing a little program that will delete all contents of a particular folder. I am using a test folder of "c:\py" (yes, windows) and the program works, but afterward when I go to my file explorer window and try to manually delete the now-empty folder a pop-up says "Folder in use - The action can't be completed because the folder or a file in it is open in another program."

I am using IDLE, and if I restart the shell I can then remove the folder just fine. This tells me that something hasn't been gracefully closed even after the program completes. I tried to see if there is an os.close() function, and there is, but that needs a file descriptor that I am unsure about. There are no open file handles that I know of.

(And if you wonder why I don't just use rmtree() on the folder itself the point of my program is to delete the contents of the folder but leave the folder itself now that it's been cleaned. I am just trying to remove it afterwards because I want to copy over a backup I made of it previously.)

Here is my code. What am I doing wrong?

!!!Heed the warning in the comments if you decide to try to run this. It WILL delete everything if you have a a c:\py folder!!!

#This will remove files and directories in "path". ***Be careful!!***

import os, shutil

path = "c:\\Py"                    #Root path of dir to clean - caution!
os.chdir(path)                     #Switch to that directory to operate on
directories = []                   #List to hold the names of the directories to remove

for x in os.scandir(path):         #Read the contents of the directory
    if x.is_file():                #Check for files
        os.remove(x.name)          #Clean out all files in root path
    elif x.is_dir():               #Check for directories
        directories.append(x.name) # Build a list of dirs to be removed next

for n in directories:              #Go through the complete list of dirs to be removed
    shutil.rmtree(os.path.join(path, n)) #This will append the dir name to the path and remove it

I guess it is the os.chdir(path). Your program's current directory is the folder that you want to remove, and this prevents you from removing the folder. Try os.chdir(os.path.expanduser('~')) at the end of the file (this is your home directory).

You are correct, thank you! I had a feeling this was it, but I felt changing dirs for a "delete" program was somewhat dangerous. But doing so in the last line will not do anything drastic.

Thanks again!