Delete File or Dir

os.remove() will remove a file.

os.rmdir() will remove an empty directory.

shutil.rmtree() will delete a directory and all its contents.

os.remove

In [1]: os.remove('/tmp/debug.log')

In [2]: os.remove('/tmp/debug.log')
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FileNotFoundError                         Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-3-870588b0988b> in <module>()
----> 1 os.remove('/tmp/debug.log')

FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/tmp/debug.log'

In [3]: try:
   ...:     os.remove('/tmp/debug.log')
   ...: except OSError:
   ...:     pass
   ...:

In [4]: try:
   ...:     os.remove('/tmp/debug.log')
   ...: except OSError as e:
   ...:     if e.errno != errno.ENOENT:
   ...:         raise
   ...:

• OSError vs. FileNotFoundError
  • In 3.3, IOError became an alias for OSError, and FileNotFoundError is a subclass of OSError.

References

[1] Scott Wilson@StackOverflow, Most pythonic way to delete a file which may not exist

[2] PEPS@Python Developer's Guide, PEP 3151 -- Reworking the OS and IO exception hierarchy