Is there any way to remove a directory and it’s contents in the PathLib module? With path.unlink() it only removes a file, with path.rmdir() the directory has to be empty. Is there no way to do it in one function call?
7 Answers
As you already know, the only two Path methods for removing files/directories are .unlink() and .rmdir() and neither does what you want.
Pathlib is a module that provides object oriented paths across different OS's, it isn't meant to have lots of diverse methods.
The aim of this library is to provide a simple hierarchy of classes to handle filesystem paths and the common operations users do over them.
The "uncommon" file system alterations, such as recursively removing a directory, is stored in different modules. If you want to recursively remove a directory, you should use the shutil module. (It works with Path instances too!)
import shutil import pathlib import os # for checking results print(os.listdir()) # ["a_directory", "foo.py", ...] path = pathlib.Path("a_directory") shutil.rmtree(path) print(os.listdir()) # ["foo.py", ...] Here's a pure pathlib implementation:
from pathlib import Path def rm_tree(pth): pth = Path(pth) for child in pth.glob('*'): if child.is_file(): child.unlink() else: rm_tree(child) pth.rmdir() Otherwise, you can try this one if you want only pathlib:
from pathlib import Path def rm_tree(pth: Path): for child in pth.iterdir(): if child.is_file(): child.unlink() else: rm_tree(child) pth.rmdir() rm_tree(your_path) If you don't mind using a third-party library give path a try. Its API is similar to pathlib.Path, but provides some additional methods, including Path.rmtree() to recursively delete a directory tree.
def rm_rf(basedir): if isinstance(basedir,str): basedir = pathlib.Path(basedir) if not basedir.is_dir(): return for p in reversed(list(basedir.rglob("*"))): if p.is_file(): p.unlink() elif p.is_dir(): p.rmdir() basedir.rmdir() You might use pathlib3x - it offers a backport of the latest (at the date of writing this answer Python 3.10.a0) Python pathlib for Python 3.6 or newer, and a few additional functions like rmtree
>>> python -m pip install pathlib3x >>> import pathlib3x as pathlib >>> my_path = pathlib.Path('c:/tmp/some_directory') >>> my_path.rmtree(ignore_errors=True) you can find it on github or PyPi
Disclaimer: I'm the author of the pathlib3x library.
Simple and effective:
def rmtree(f: Path): if f.is_file(): f.unlink() else: for child in f.iterdir(): rmtree(child) f.rmdir() 
