os.remove() Access is denied

[bowlofred]

If you have a file, you can remove just that file with os.remove() or os.unlink(). Similar to /bin/rm, this function fails on directories.

If you have a (empty) directory, you can remove it with os.rmdir(). Similar to /bin/rmdir.

If you have a path and want it and everything underneath it removed if possible, you can do so with shutil.rmtree(). Similar to /bin/rm -r.

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Also, older documentation stated that os.remove() would throw an OSError if it were handed a directory. Newer documentation states flatly that it now throws a IsADirectoryError. But it looks like that may be OS dependent. I do see the newer error on Linux, but I don't on MacOS (which still throws OSError, even on 3.8). I'm guessing that Windows does the same, but I can't test that immediately.

Linux/Python 3.7.4

>>> os.remove("dir")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
IsADirectoryError: [Errno 21] Is a directory: 'dir'

MacOS/Python 3.8.2

>>> os.remove("dir")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
PermissionError: [Errno 1] Operation not permitted: 'dir'