Finding empty directories in Python
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:date: 2013-05-26 16:00
:tags: Python
:slug: finding-empty-directories-in-python
:author: Brian Neal

Late one night I needed to write some Python code to recursively find empty
directories. Searching online produced some unsatisfactory solutions. Here is
a simple solution that leverages `os.walk`_.

.. sourcecode:: python

   import os

   empty_dirs = []
   for root, dirs, files in os.walk(starting_path):
      if not len(dirs) and not len(files):
          empty_dirs.append(root)

If you then wish to delete these empty directories:

.. sourcecode:: python

   for path in empty_dirs:
       os.removedirs(path)

.. _os.walk: http://docs.python.org/2/library/os.html#os.walk