How do you delete a file in python if it exists?

Python is one of the most popular programming languages, known for its versatility and ability to handle a wide range of tasks. In addition to creating and modifying files, Python can also be used to delete files. Fortunately, the process is relatively straightforward and can be done in just a few lines of code.

If you need to delete a file in Python, the first step is to check if the file exists. To do this, you can use the os module within Python:

import os

if os.path.exists("testfile.txt"):

print("File exists")

else:

print("File does not exist")

Once you have verified that the file exists, you can use the os library's remove() method to delete it:

import os

os.remove("testfile.txt")

print("File Deleted")

If you want the code to take no action if the file doesn't exist, or else issue an error message if it fails to delete, then you can wrap it up in a try-except block so that it handles any exceptions that occur:

try:

os.remove("testfile.txt")

print("File Deleted")

except FileNotFoundError:

print ("The file does not exist")

Finally, if you only want to delete a file if certain conditions are met (for example, age or size), then you can use os' stat() method to get additional attributes about the target file which can then be used as part of your condition logic:

import os # get additional attributes about a file fstat = os.stat('testfileYjpg') # check for certain criteria related_to_age = time() - fstat[8] > 10*24*60*60 # 24 hours * 10 days # only remove files older than 10 days if related_to_age == True: os.remove('testfileYjpg') print('File Deleted') Else: Print('File does not meet criteria and was not deleted')

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