How To Delete The Symlink Along With The Source Directory

I would like to delete the symlink along with the source directory. For example - ls -lrt testsymlink -> /user/temp/testdir I would like to remove both testsymlink and /user/

Solution 1:

You can use the result of os.path.realpath to detect and delete the symlink target. Example:

import os

# ./foo -> ./bar
filepath = "./foo"

if (os.path.realpath(filepath) != filepath):
    targetpath = os.path.realpath(filepath)

os.remove(filepath)
if (targetpath):
     os.remove(targetpath)

Solution 2:

EDIT: I didn't see that you wanted a solution in python: This is all only relevant in a unix shell. Although you could wrap the two commands below in a os.system() call, I highly suggest you follow Tim's answer.

To get the path of the object the symlink is pointing to, you can use readlink:

$ readlink testsymlink
/user/temp/testdir

To delete the object the symlink is pointing to, you can pass the output of readlink to rm:

$ rm -r `readlink testsymlink`

The backticks cause the command inside of them to be run, and then replaced with its own output. Finally, to remove the symlink itself, we simply run:

$ rm testsymlink