Greg's Tech Blog

I saw a script written in PowerShell that removed old PowerShell logs and any empty folders that would result, and I wanted to see if I could replicate it in Python. Basically, the script will examine the FOLDER_PATH for files aged older than FILE_AGE_DAYS (7 in this case) and remove them. After removing the files it will check if there any empty folders in the FOLDER_PATH and remove those too. A danger point to be aware of when running the script: You have to make sure that FOLDER_PATH is correct. Running it with FOLDER_PATH = "C:\" for example might have very bad consequences. I tried to include some Python typing also, but the script is not particularly long or complicated, so might have been overkill.

import os
import pathlib
import time

FOLDER_PATH: str = "D:\\Garbage\\"
FILE_EXT: str = ".txt"
FILE_AGE_DAYS: float = 7

def remove_folder(path):
    try:
        os.rmdir(path)
        print(f"{path} folder removed !")
    except OSError as error:
        print(error)
        print("Folder could not be removed.")

def remove_file(path):
    try:
        os.remove(path)
        print(f"{path} file removed !")
    except OSError as error:
        print(error)
        print("File could not be removed.")

def get_file_or_folder_age(path) -> float:
    # Get the modification time of the file is seconds
    mod_time = os.path.getmtime(path)
    return mod_time

def main():
    # Initialise counters
    deleted_folders_count: int = 0
    deleted_files_count: int = 0

    # Path to test
    path: str = FOLDER_PATH

    # Specify number of days to look back
    days: float = FILE_AGE_DAYS

    # Convert days to seconds
    # time.time() returns current time in seconds
    seconds: float = time.time() - (days * 24 * 60 * 60)

    # Check if files exist that are older than 'days' amount
    if os.path.exists(path):
        # Iterate over files
        for root_folder, folders, files in os.walk(path):
            for f in files:
                file_path = os.path.join(root_folder, f)
                file_extension = pathlib.Path(file_path).suffix
                # Check age and extension, if old .txt: remove
                if seconds >= get_file_or_folder_age(file_path) and file_extension == FILE_EXT:
                    remove_file(file_path)
                    deleted_files_count += 1        

    else:
        print(f'"{path}" not found')

    # Check if empty folders exist
    if os.path.exists(path):
        # Iterate over folders
        for root_folder, folders, files in os.walk(path):
            for folder in folders:
                folder_path = os.path.join(root_folder, folder)
                # Check if folder is empty, if yes: remove
                if len(os.listdir(folder_path)) == 0:
                    remove_folder(folder_path)
                    deleted_folders_count += 1

    else:
        print(f'"{path}" not found')

    print(f"Total files deleted: {deleted_files_count}")
    print(f"Total folders deleted: {deleted_folders_count}")

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Old file and folder removal script