CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonfile-io
André
André

Reputation: 25554

How to display a list?

I'm building a simple function that works (delete the files). But In the end I want to return the list of the files that were effectively deleted.

This is the function:

def deleteFiles(files):
    # empty list
    RemovedFiles = list()

    for file in files:
        # Delete the file
        if os.remove(file):
            RemovedFiles.append(file)

    return RemovedFiles

I run this function with:

print deleteFiles([/home/xyz/xyz.zip])

This effectively deletes the xyz.zip but returns an empty list: []. What am I doing wrong here?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1284

Answers (4)

unni
unni

Reputation: 2991

That is because os.remove() does not return anything. Your if condition evaluates to false.

Try this:

def deleteFiles(files):
# empty list
RemovedFiles = list()

for file in files:
    # Delete the file
    try:
        os.remove(file)
        RemovedFiles.append(file)
    except OSError:
        continue

return RemovedFiles

This should work

Upvotes: 2

eumiro
eumiro

Reputation: 212855

The problem is that os.remove does not return anything.

You can however try and except:

for filename in filenames:
    try:
        # try to remove the file
        os.remove(filename)
    except OSError:
        pass
        # file not removed (maybe does not exist or is write-protected)
        # you may report an error here
    else:
        # this executes only if os.remove was successful
        RemovedFiles.append(filename)

Upvotes: 4

Tim Pietzcker
Tim Pietzcker

Reputation: 336138

os.remove() doesn't return a value, so your if statement becomes effectively

if None:
    RemovedFiles.append(file)

On the other hand, it does throw an exception if it can't remove the file, so the following should work:

try:
    os.remove(file)
except OSError:
    pass
else:
    RemovedFiles.append(file)

Upvotes: 3

Eddy Pronk
Eddy Pronk

Reputation: 6695

os.remove() returns None, so you never get to append to the list.

Upvotes: 3

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