python - Most pythonic way to delete a file which may not exist

Question

I want to delete the file filename if it exists. Is it proper to say

if os.path.exists(filename):
    os.remove(filename)

Is there a better way? A one-line way?

Answer 1

A more pythonic way would be:

try:
    os.remove(filename)
except OSError:
    pass

Although this takes even more lines and looks very ugly, it avoids the unnecessary call to os.path.exists() and follows the python convention of overusing exceptions.

It may be worthwhile to write a function to do this for you:

import os, errno

def silentremove(filename):
    try:
        os.remove(filename)
    except OSError as e: # this would be "except OSError, e:" before Python 2.6
        if e.errno != errno.ENOENT: # errno.ENOENT = no such file or directory
            raise # re-raise exception if a different error occurred