What other checks do I need for removing files after X amount of days?

Question

I am trying to remove files in my directory if they are over 30 days. However I don't know what other checks I need to do. The examples I found online wasn't very thorough besides just subtracting the datetime of when the file was created against X amount of days.

import datetime
import os

def remove_old_files():
    """
    Remove any file over 30 days
    """

    file_path_directory = "inter/"
    today = datetime.datetime.now()
    retention_days = 30
    try:
        # Check each item in our path and verify if it's a file.
        for each_file in os.listdir(file_path_directory):
            each_file_path = os.path.join(file_path_directory, each_file)
            if os.path.isfile(each_file_path):

                # Get created datetime for each file and subtract the days from today.
                file_creation_date = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(os.path.getctime(each_file_path))
                number_of_days = today - file_creation_date
                if number_of_days.days > retention_days:
                    os.remove(each_file_path)

    except Exception as e:
        print("Exception in remove_old_files: ", e)

Answer 1

Review point number one is, basically, don't use Python 2 unless you have a gun to your head.

Make your path parametric.

Your exception handling isn't particularly useful, because it swallows all exceptions, printing only a very brief description of them, and preventing them from being passed to the upper level. If you want this to be fail-safe, make an except in the outer calling context and not in your function itself.

I think it would be less surprising to call your variable now instead of today, since you aren't rounding to the date. Similarly, represent your retention variable as a timedelta instead of just an integer.

Suggested

from datetime import datetime, timedelta
import os


def remove_old_files(file_path_directory="inter/"):
    """
    Remove any file older than 30 days
    """

    now = datetime.now()
    retention = timedelta(days=30)

    # Check each item in our path and verify if it's a file.
    for each_file in os.listdir(file_path_directory):
        each_file_path = os.path.join(file_path_directory, each_file)

        if os.path.isfile(each_file_path):
            # Get created datetime for each file and subtract the days from today.
            file_creation_date = datetime.fromtimestamp(os.path.getctime(each_file_path))
            age = now - file_creation_date
            if age > retention:
                os.remove(each_file_path)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    remove_old_files('./archived')

Note that this would have more niceties if and when you were able to adopt Python 3, including typehints and pathlib.