How to find recursively empty directories in Python?

Question

Similarly to GNU find's find . -type d -empty -delete I'd like to find empty directories including those with empty subdirectories (and subdirectories containing emtpy subdirs etc.), but without deleting them. Is there any existing solution or do I have to manually use os.walk (probably with topdown=False and keeping track of the empty subdirectories found so far)?

Answer 1

Ok, here's my manual solution using os.walk. The function is_empty can of course be modified, e.g. to exclude hidden files, or in my example desktop.ini:

import os


def empty_dirs(root_dir='.', recursive=True):
    empty_dirs = []
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(root_dir, topdown=False):
        #print root, dirs, files
        if recursive:
            all_subs_empty = True  # until proven otherwise
            for sub in dirs:
                full_sub = os.path.join(root, sub)
                if full_sub not in empty_dirs:
                    #print full_sub, "not empty"
                    all_subs_empty = False
                    break
        else:
            all_subs_empty = (len(dirs) == 0)
        if all_subs_empty and is_empty(files):
            empty_dirs.append(root)
            yield root


def is_empty(files):
    return (len(files) == 0 or files == ['desktop.ini'])


def find_empty_dirs(root_dir='.', recursive=True):
    return list(empty_dirs(root_dir, recursive))


print find_empty_dirs(recursive=False)