Delete hidden files on unix

[sjdevnull at yahoo.com]

On Mar 3, 9:38 am, subeen <tamim.shahr... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 3, 6:13 pm, Philipp Pagel <pDOTpa... at helmholtz-muenchen.de>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> > loial <jldunn2... at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > > How can I delete hidden files on unix with python, i.e I want to do
> > > equivalent of
> > > rm  .lock*
>
> > Here is one way to do it:
>
> > import os, glob
> > for filename in glob.glob('.lock*'):
> >     os.unlink(filename)
>
> > Alternatively, you could also do this:
>
> > import os
> > os.system('rm .lock*')
>
> > cu
> >         Philipp
>
> > --
> > Dr. Philipp Pagel
> > Lehrstuhl f. Genomorientierte Bioinformatik
> > Technische Universität Münchenhttp://mips.gsf.de/staff/pagel
>
> Another way is to execute the linux command directly :)
> Check here:http://love-python.blogspot.com/2008/02/execute-linux-commands-in-pyt...
>

Note that that can get dangerous with shell expansions:

e.g. (don't run in a directory with files you want to keep!)
import os
open("--help", "w")
os.system("rm *help")

will actually run "rm --help", printing the help for rm rather than
removing the file named "--help".  There are a lot of security
implications to allowing this kind of shell expansion of commands.
The system-call method with os.unlink is easier to get right.