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I've found in my Python travels that I
usually care more about deleting files and

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directories, than I do moving them around.

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In fact, I might have done more deletion
than creation even since, quite often,

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files get added through
version controller or

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user uploads, and
then I need to clean them up with Python.

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So let's look at how to delete files and
directories with Python.

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But be warned,
Python deletes items immediately.

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The files won't be moved to the users
trash or any equivalent location.

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We'll look at a handy third-party library,
though, named Send2Trash,

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that will help us avoid this behavior.

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We're gonna look at three different
functions for removing things and,

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unfortunately, you kinda have
to know all three of them.

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They each do different things and

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you'll often need to use at
least two of them together.

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Let's start with the function
that lets us delete files.

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So I've created a file here
in the JavaScript directory

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that's called treehouse.js.

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There's nothing in there, it's just a file
I wanted to have on hand to delete.

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So now I can do os.remove, and

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I can say bootstrap/js/treehouse.js.

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And if I look now, the file's gone.

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The remove function lets us,
well, remove a file.

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Now if you're using Windows and

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you try to remove a file that's currently
in use, Python is going to throw an error.

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On POSIX systems, it'll remove the
directory entry so it wouldn't show up if

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you listed the directory, but it doesn't
clear away the associated memory.

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So the memory is still in use but
the file doesn't show up in the directory.

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That can only be used to remove files.

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So what are directories?

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Well, Python requires that directories
be empty before you try and delete them.

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So you'll probably find yourself
using os.remove first and

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then you can bust out os.rmdir
to remove a directory.

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So, for instance, I know that
the bootstrap/img directory is empty.

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Let's double check that.

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And it is because it doesn't even exist.

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Let's create a new folder here and
we'll call it img.

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So there's nothing in there.

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And now if we remove it, it's gone.

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Great, the directory is empty,
Python is happy to delete it.

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But if I try to do os.rmdir bootstrap/js,
which we just saw

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has several files in it, I get an error
saying that it doesn't want to do that.

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I also misspelled bootstrap.

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There we go, there's our OSError
of the directory isn't empty.

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That says the js directory isn't empty,
Python complains like I just showed you.

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We could use os.walk or os.scandir
to move through the directory and

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delete everything before we
remove the directory itself.

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We could do, say, for thing in os.scandir,

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bootstrap/js/, if thing.is file,
so if it's a file,

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Then os.remove, thing.path.

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Thing.path gives us the path to the file.

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And now we can do os.rmdir,
bootstrap/js, and

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the directory happily is deleted.

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So, thanks Python.

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Now if I need to delete a tree of
empty directories I can use os.rmdirs.

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Let go ahead and make one first,
let's do os.makedirs,

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let's do bootstrap/js/packages/stuff, so

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if you had a whole bunch
of directories there.

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And now we can delete that,
we can do os.removedirs,

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and we can give it
bootstrap/js/packages/stuff.

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But that's kind of weird, right?

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I said to remove stuff, and

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it removed stuff, it removed packages,
it removed js, but it didn't

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remove bootstrap because I'm currently
in the bootstrap directory right here.

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This function tries to remove every
directory that you specified.

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And it stops as soon as it
encounters an error though.

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And usually that error is because
the parent directory isn't empty.

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In our case it's because
bootstrap wasn't empty.

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So Python stops and
bootstrap sticks around.

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All right, so
we can delete files and directories.

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But, like I said at the beginning
of the video, they're gone, gone,

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they're deleted immediately.

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We can prevent that by using
the Send2Trash package.

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I'm gonna hop out of Python here and
I'm gonna do pip3 install send2trash.

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And then I can use it in Python.

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So I'll clear my screen,
and I'm gonna say,

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from send2trash import send two trash.

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And then I'll do, send2trash, tree.py.

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And if I look in my trash can, I have
tree.py right there in the trash can.

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I didn't want to delete it, so
it's in my trash, that's great.

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I can bring it right back if I need to.

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So, let's go up a directory here and
I want tree.py to be right there.

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Often, when you find yourself needing
temporary files or directories,

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you resort to a lot of things
we've just been doing.

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You'll create a directory or a file,
fill it with information and

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then move it to its final location or
delete it.

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Well, you know Python,
if there's something that's commonly done,

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that pattern is probably
built into the language.

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Temporary files and
directories are no exception.

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So after this temporary break I'll be
back to show you how to create transient

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files and directories in Python.