Re: Incorrect Python errors when using os.remove to delete a directory

[Michael Wild <themiwi@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 3:51 PM, Adam Dinwoodie <adam@dinwoodie.org> wrote:
> If I use os.remove in Python to remove a directory, I expect it to fail
> with an OSError on Python2 or a IsADirectoryError on Python3.  On
> Python2, I get OSError, but with the wrong error code, whereas on
> Python3 I get completely the wrong exception.
>
> Simple testcases:
>
>     $ rm -rf testdir && mkdir testdir && python -c 'import os; os.remove("testdir")'
>     Traceback (most recent call last):
>       File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
>     OSError: [Errno 1] Operation not permitted: 'testdir'
>
>     $ rm -rf testdir && mkdir testdir && python3 -c 'import os; os.remove("testdir")'
>     Traceback (most recent call last):
>       File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
>     PermissionError: [Errno 1] Operation not permitted: 'testdir'
>
> On my handy CentOS box, I see the following instead:
>
>     $ rm -rf testdir && mkdir testdir && python -c 'import os; os.remove("testdir")'
>     Traceback (most recent call last):
>       File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
>     OSError: [Errno 21] Is a directory: 'testdir'
>
>     $ rm -rf testdir && mkdir testdir && python3 -c 'import os; os.remove("testdir")'
>     Traceback (most recent call last):
>       File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
>     IsADirectoryError: [Errno 21] Is a directory: 'testdir'
>
> Now I've realised what's going wrong I can work around it, but it'd be
> nice if the correct error were raised in the first place.

This is a bug in Python itself, and not Cygwin specific. At least I
get the same behavior with my Anaconda installation.

Not really a fix for the bug itself, but usually I consider it good
practice to first call os.isdir().

Cheers

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