CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonwindowserror
Sergio Da Silva
Sergio Da Silva

Reputation: 361

Can't remove a folder with os.remove (WindowsError: [Error 5] Access is denied: 'c:/temp/New Folder')

I'm working on a test case for which I create some subdirs. However, I don't seem to have the permission to remove them anymore. My UA is an Administrator account (Windows XP).

I first tried:

folder="c:/temp/" 
for dir in os.listdir(folder): 
    os.remove(folder+dir)

and then

folder="c:/temp/" 
os.remove(folder+"New Folder")

because I'm sure "New Folder" is empty. However, in all cases I get:

Traceback (most recent call last): 
  File "<string>", line 3, in <module> 
WindowsError: [Error 5] Access is denied: 'c:/temp/New Folder'

Does anybody know what's going wrong?

Upvotes: 36

Views: 127334

Answers (15)

Sean
Sean

Reputation: 1064

In case it helps - you could recursively delete files, and then directories, with try..except for each item, to ignore exceptions.

Realize this is not ideal, but in my case I tried many other things (using various delete functions, and a context manager to try to force release of file/directory locks) - but Python kept holding on to maybe 1 file out a huge set of files, preventing directory deletion.

Something like this will delete all files/directories that can be deleted, under 'temp_dir':

import os
import shutil

def _rmrf(temp_dir):
    os.chmod(temp_dir, 0o777) # add full permissions
    shutil.rmtree(temp_dir)

def _delete_files_recursively(temp_dir):
    for dirpath, _dirnames, filenames in os.walk(temp_dir):
        for f in filenames:
            fp = os.path.join(dirpath, f)
            try:
                os.remove(fp)
            except:
                pass

def _delete_dirs_recursively(temp_dir):
    for dirpath, dirnames, _filenames in os.walk(temp_dir):
        for d in dirnames:
            dp = os.path.join(dirpath, d)
            try:
                _rmrf(dp)
            except:
                pass

def delete_dir_contents(temp_dir):
    _delete_files_recursively(temp_dir)
    _delete_dirs_recursively(temp_dir)

A more complete example is here:

https://github.com/mrseanryan/py_utils/blob/master/util_robust_delete.py

Upvotes: 0

Dmitry Tuchin
Dmitry Tuchin

Reputation: 75

I has same issue on Server version OS. But that issue was not workstation type OS. I add next simple code (os.chmod) and an issue has been lost:

import os
import stat

os.chmod(file, stat.S_IWRITE)
os.remove(file)

Upvotes: 0

douglas carmaem
douglas carmaem

Reputation: 11

import os
import shutil


dir = os.listdir(folder)
for file in dir:
    if os.path.isdir(f'{folder}\\{file}'):
       shutil.rmtree(os.path.join(f'{folder}\\{file}'))
    else:
       os.remove(f'{folder}\\{file}')

Upvotes: 1

user18672350
user18672350

Reputation: 49

In my case it was due to lack of admin privileges. I solved it running terminal or cmd as administrator

windows key -> cmd -> right click -> run as administrator

Upvotes: 0

aezaz vahora
aezaz vahora

Reputation: 21

Can't remove a folder with os.remove

import os

if os.path.exists("demofile.txt"):
  os.remove("demofile.txt")
else:
  print("The file does not exist")

Upvotes: 0

arun
arun

Reputation: 51

Use os.rmdir instead of os.remove to remove a folder

os.rmdir("d:\\test")

It will remove the test folder from d:\\ directory

Upvotes: 5

sofblocks
sofblocks

Reputation: 9

If it's a directory, then just use:

os.rmdir("path")

Upvotes: 1

a w
a w

Reputation: 41

If you want remove folder, you can use

os.rmdir(path)

Upvotes: 4

8bitwide
8bitwide

Reputation: 2071

os.remove() only works on files. It doesn't work on directories. According to the documentation:

os.remove(path) Remove (delete) the file path. If path is a directory, OSError is raised; see rmdir() below to remove a directory. This is identical to the unlink() function documented below. On Windows, attempting to remove a file that is in use causes an exception to be raised; on Unix, the directory entry is removed but the storage allocated to the file is not made available until the original file is no longer in use.

use os.removedirs() for directories

Upvotes: 14

Thomas O. Tettey
Thomas O. Tettey

Reputation: 231

For Python 3.6, the file permission mode should be 0o777:

os.chmod(filePath, 0o777)
os.remove(filePath)

Upvotes: 23

Sushen Sharma
Sushen Sharma

Reputation: 1

The reason you can't delete folders because to delete subfolder in C: drive ,you need admin privileges Either invoke admin privileges in python or do the following hack

Make a simple .bat file with following shell command 

del /q "C:\Temp\*"

FOR /D %%p IN ("C:\temp\*.*") DO rmdir "%%p" /s /q

Save it as file.bat and call this bat file from your python file

Bat file will handle deleting subfolders from C: drive

Upvotes: 0

Pradeep S
Pradeep S

Reputation: 31

File is in read only mode so change the file permission by os.chmod() function and then try with os.remove().

Ex:

Change the file Permission to 0777 and then remove the file.

os.chmod(filePath, 0777)
os.remove(filePath)

Upvotes: 0

Aesthete
Aesthete

Reputation: 18850

os.remove requires a file path, and raises OSError if path is a directory.

Try os.rmdir(folder+'New Folder')

Which will:

Remove (delete) the directory path. Only works when the directory is empty, otherwise, OSError is raised.

Making paths is also safer using os.path.join:

os.path.join("c:\\", "temp", "new folder")

Upvotes: 48

Rakesh
Rakesh

Reputation: 82755

U can use Shutil module to delete the dir and its sub folders

import os
import shutil

for dir in os.listdir(folder):
    shutil.rmtree(os.path.join(folder,dir))

Upvotes: 11

appusajeev
appusajeev

Reputation: 2299

try the inbuilt shutil module

shutil.rmtree(folder+"New Folder")

this recursively deletes a directory, even if it has contents.

Upvotes: 44

Related Questions