Python Tutorial: File Deletion and Folder Deletion / directory deletion

Key Takeaways

hello and welcome to another Python tutorial in this tutorial we're going to be talking about how to manipulate actual files so how do we delete rename and move files and even directories so with that let's get into it let's make a fake directory here and we'll just call this um whole folder and within whole folder we're going to make just some random stuff another folder and then we're going to have a um Let's do an image and then we'll just make an extra text document here okay so now we have stuff within this whole folder so the next thing we want to do is delete stuff like let's delete something from that folder so the first things that we're going to need we're going to have to import two fun or two Imports and the first one is going to be glob for Global and then import OS now the next thing we want to do is specify the directory uh that this stuff is located in now you can shorten the directories for example where file delete you can just say whole folder right so we could say whole folder oh my goodness can't type and then use forward slashes I think you can use back slashes as long as you use two I want to say but just use a forward slash it makes navigating a lot easier so then within whole folder let's say uh we want to go ahead and delete this text document so let me just make a copy of it and we're going to delete this one so um so we'll say that's our directory whole folder now the next thing we want to do is say os. CH dur we want to change directory in to that directory subsequently we want to specify the files that we want to delete so that'll be Global and then anything in that directory ending with txt let getting the axe for file name in files we want to do OS unlink file name unlink is short for dominate so uh let's go ahead and run this pop this over here and we see it actually deleted both of our uh text documents because we said to delete everything that was text but everything else is still intact so we didn't delete everything just the text files so now I know you know what everybody wants to know is how do we delete the entire directory you know do some serious destruction so um if you you might be thinking you could just maybe delete all from a whole folder but if you do that let me show you what ends up happening you get access denied we we don't have access to do that because this isn't like a valid windows program I think you could go into your user account settings and just take away the requirement for Access so it's kind of like whenever you download like a third party program and you go to run it and windows is like are you sure you know um that's not happening here instead we're just trying to go ahead and go through it and not ask for Access and it's getting dened so you could go through and remove that or you could actually delete uh hold directories this way so I'm going to show you guys the way to delete directories properly without making yourself super vulnerable plus it's going to take a lot less code now when you do this before we kind of use Shand we just said okay the folder because this is our file was located right here but let's um let's use we're going to use a different function and we're going to type out the entire thing just due to the nature of of this uh function here so we're going to import shutil and from shutil uh we want to get remove tree so this is going to remove the entire tree so the tree that we want to remove we're going to give the entire location because it's going to remove a tree and you're not really I mean you're kind of specifying the name but it's just good to go ahead and type out the entire thing whenever you're deleting files especially whole folders really so this is going to be users H uh desktop and we're we're hiding over here in sentex lessons in the file manip folder and we want to go ah and delete the entire whole folder and that's it it's a oneline function basically so you hit it you go goodbye whole folder it is now gone so that's pretty much it with deleting directories and files in the next tutorial I'm going to be showing you guys how to rename and to move files so kind of like deleting and um well deleting it besides from the uh directory it was kind of different functions but deleting is pretty much the same overall and then also renaming and moving is kind of the same thing so with that uh hopefully that's helping some of you guys stay tuned to the next video as always thanks for watching