How do I remove/delete a folder that is not empty with Python?

From the python docs on os.walk():

# Delete everything reachable from the directory named in 'top',
# assuming there are no symbolic links.
# CAUTION:  This is dangerous!  For example, if top == '/', it
# could delete all your disk files.
import os
for root, dirs, files in os.walk(top, topdown=False):
    for name in files:
        os.remove(os.path.join(root, name))
    for name in dirs:
        os.rmdir(os.path.join(root, name))

import shutil
shutil.rmtree(dest, ignore_errors=True)

shutil.rmtree(path,ignore_errors=False,onerror=errorRemoveReadonly) 
def errorRemoveReadonly(func, path, exc):
    excvalue = exc[1]
    if func in (os.rmdir, os.remove) and excvalue.errno == errno.EACCES:
        # change the file to be readable,writable,executable: 0777
        os.chmod(path, stat.S_IRWXU | stat.S_IRWXG | stat.S_IRWXO)  
        # retry
        func(path)
    else:
        raiseenter code here

If ignore_errors is set, errors are ignored; otherwise, if onerror is set, it is called to handle the error with arguments (func, path, exc_info) where func is os.listdir, os.remove, or os.rmdir; path is the argument to that function that caused it to fail; and exc_info is a tuple returned by sys.exc_info(). If ignore_errors is false and onerror is None, an exception is raised.enter code here

from python 3.4 you may use :

import pathlib

def delete_folder(pth) :
    for sub in pth.iterdir() :
        if sub.is_dir() :
            delete_folder(sub)
        else :
            sub.unlink()
    pth.rmdir()

where pth is a pathlib.Path instance. Nice, but slow.

Base on kkubasik's answer, check if folder exists before remove, more robust

import shutil
def remove_folder(path):
    # check if folder exists
    if os.path.exists(path):
         # remove if exists
         shutil.rmtree(path)
remove_folder("/folder_name")

if you are sure, that you want to delete the entire dir tree, and are no more interested in contents of dir, then crawling for entire dir tree is stupidness... just call native OS command from python to do that. It will be faster, efficient and less memory consuming.

RMDIR c:\blah /s /q 

or *nix

rm -rf /home/whatever 

In python, the code will look like..

import sys
import os

mswindows = (sys.platform == "win32")

def getstatusoutput(cmd):
    """Return (status, output) of executing cmd in a shell."""
    if not mswindows:
        return commands.getstatusoutput(cmd)
    pipe = os.popen(cmd + ' 2>&1', 'r')
    text = pipe.read()
    sts = pipe.close()
    if sts is None: sts = 0
    if text[-1:] == '\n': text = text[:-1]
    return sts, text


def deleteDir(path):
    """deletes the path entirely"""
    if mswindows: 
        cmd = "RMDIR "+ path +" /s /q"
    else:
        cmd = "rm -rf "+path
    result = getstatusoutput(cmd)
    if(result[0]!=0):
        raise RuntimeError(result[1])

You can use os.system command for simplicity:

import os
os.system("rm -rf dirname")

As obvious, it actually invokes system terminal to accomplish this task.