List iteration problem using any() function

Question

I created a script to delete files from a folder and its respective subfolders. These subfolders are named as follows: 1.GERAL_%i with i ranging from 1 to 137. However, I just want to delete the files from 89 folder on, I don’t want to delete folders 1 to 88. I have done the script below:

import os

my_path = os.getcwd()
foldersToSkip = list(f'1.GERAL_{i}' for i in range (1,89))

for root, dirs, files in os.walk(my_path):
    if not any(x in root for x in foldersToSkip):
        for file in files:
            if any(y in file for y in filesToDel):
                fileToDel = os.path.join(root,file)
                os.remove(fileToDel)

Apparently it was supposed to work, but the code didn’t delete any file. When I debugged, I noticed the error. I noticed that the command x in root for x in foldersToSkip does not make an exact comparison between the string x and the list string foldersToSkip, but the list string was only contained in the string x. For example: script does not delete files from subfolder 1_GERAL_90 why there is a string 1_GERAL_9 on the list foldersToSkip, and when he does the comparison the output ends up being true.

My question then is, how do I change my code to make this comparison accurate?

Answer 1

Basically the function os.walk returns a tuple with three values:

1. dirpath, one string
2. dirnames, a list
3. filenames, a list

When you do x in root, your root will be a string and therefore will be checking whether the string has as substring the desired value. That’s why it happened the behavior you verified, to skip the directory 1_GERAL_90, because the check you performed was '1_GERAL_9' in '1_GERAL_90'.

To do what you need, you can simplify using the module pathlib along with the shutil:

from pathlib import Path
import shutil
import re

def must_be_deleted(name):
    groups = re.match(r'1\.GERAL_(\d+)', name)
    if groups and int(groups[1]) >= 89:
        return True
    return False


path = Path.cwd()

for item in path:
    if item.is_dir() and must_be_deleted(item.name):
        shutil.rmtree(item)

Basically all items are covered within path, if it is a directory and the end number of the name is greater than or equal to 89, the directory is deleted.

---

Since it is already defined that you need to delete directories with the number between 89 and 137, you do not need to use the regular expression, just go through a value in this range and delete the directory that exists. This detail went unnoticed initially, so I suggested the regular expression.

So I could be like:

import pathlib
import shutil

cwd = pathlib.Path.cwd()

for i in range(89, 138):
    item = cwd / f'1.GERAL_{i}'
    if item.is_dir():
        shutil.rmtree(item)