[Python-Dev] Coernic Desktop Search versus shutil.rmtree (original) (raw)

Tim Peters tim.peters at gmail.com
Thu Sep 2 16:37:03 CEST 2004

[Tim]

The cause: Windows has low-level hooks for apps that want to monitor changes to the filesystem. For example, virus scanners use those heavily. Coernic also uses them, to reindex changed files in the background. So it can keep a file open beyond the time Python thinks it deleted it, and then trying to rmdir its parent directory fails (because the directory isn't really empty yet).

[Aahz]

What happens when you use Windows Exploder to delete the folder?

I didn't try Explorer specifically. Since I was in a DOS box anyway, I used rmdir/s to clean it out. I'm sure using Explorer would have worked too.

This is a timing problem. By the time I can click on the folder to delete it in Explorer, or by the time I can type "rmdir/s xx", Copernic is long done reindexing the files, so there's no problem nuking the directory then. shutil.rmtree issues the rmdir at machine speed.

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