Python: Remove empty folders recursively

Question

I'm having troubles finding and deleting empty folders with my Python script. I have some directories with files more or less like this:

A/
--B/
----a.txt
----b.pdf
--C/
----d.pdf

I'm trying to delete all files which aren't PDFs and after that delete all empty folders. I can delete the files that I want to, but then I can't get the empty directories. What I'm doing wrong?

    os.chdir(path+"/"+name+"/Test Data/Checklists")
    pprint("Current path: "+ os.getcwd())
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(path+"/"+name+"/Test Data/Checklists"):
            for name in files:
                    if not(name.endswith(".pdf")):
                            os.remove(os.path.join(root, name))
    pprint("Deletting empty folders..")
    pprint("Current path: "+ os.getcwd())
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(path+"/"+name+"/Test Data/Checklists", topdown=False):
            if not dirs and not files:
                    os.rmdir(root)

Answer 1

use insted the function

os.removedirs(path)

this will remove directories until the parent directory is not empty.

Answer 2

Ideally, you should remove the directories immediately after deleting the files, rather than doing two passes with os.walk

import sys
import os

for dir, subdirs, files in os.walk(sys.argv[1], topdown=False):
    for name in files:
        if not(name.endswith(".pdf")):
            os.remove(os.path.join(dir, name))

    # check whether the directory is now empty after deletions, and if so, remove it
    if len(os.listdir(dir)) == 0:
        os.rmdir(dir)

Answer 3

For empty folders deletion you can use this snippet. It can be combined with some files deletion, but as last run should be used as is.

import os


def drop_empty_folders(directory):
    """Verify that every empty folder removed in local storage."""

    for dirpath, dirnames, filenames in os.walk(directory, topdown=False):
        if not dirnames and not filenames:
            os.rmdir(dirpath)

Answer 4

remove all empty folders

import os 
folders = './A/'  # directory
for folder in list(os.walk(folders)) :
    if not os.listdir(folder[0]):
        os.removedirs(folder[0])