bgneal@4: Finding empty directories in Python
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bgneal@4: 
bgneal@4: :date: 2013-05-26 16:00
bgneal@4: :tags: Python
bgneal@4: :slug: finding-empty-directories-in-python
bgneal@4: :author: Brian Neal
bgneal@4: 
bgneal@4: Late one night I needed to write some Python code to recursively find empty
bgneal@4: directories. Searching online produced some unsatisfactory solutions. Here is
bgneal@4: a simple solution that leverages `os.walk`_.
bgneal@4: 
bgneal@4: .. sourcecode:: python
bgneal@4: 
bgneal@4:    import os
bgneal@4: 
bgneal@4:    empty_dirs = []
bgneal@4:    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(starting_path):
bgneal@4:       if not len(dirs) and not len(files):
bgneal@4:           empty_dirs.append(root)
bgneal@4: 
bgneal@4: If you then wish to delete these empty directories:
bgneal@4: 
bgneal@4: .. sourcecode:: python
bgneal@4: 
bgneal@4:    for path in empty_dirs:
bgneal@4:        os.removedirs(path)
bgneal@4: 
bgneal@4: .. _os.walk: http://docs.python.org/2/library/os.html#os.walk