Question

Currently I have some code deleting some temporary files created by my program:

# Delete the generated files
exts = [".lsys", ".py", ".pyc"]
for ext in exts:
    os.remove("{0}{1}{2}".format(self.grammarDir, filename, ext))

Now I’m trying to port the application to Mac. Looking at the documentation for Python 2.7, it specifically says:

Remove (delete) the file path. If path is a directory, OSError is
raised; see rmdir() below to remove a directory. This is identical to
the unlink() function documented below. On Windows, attempting to
remove a file that is in use causes an exception to be raised; on
Unix, the directory entry is removed but the storage allocated to the
file is not made available until the original file is no longer in
use.

Availability: Unix, Windows.

Is there an equivalent to os.remove() for Mac or am I stuck using something like this?

os.system("rm {0}{1}{2}".format(self.grammarDir, filename, ext))

I need compatibility with Mac, and maintaining compatibility with Ubuntu would be a huge bonus (but isn’t strictly necessary).

Edit:

Well, now I feel foolish. Turns out I had a broken call above this segment of code so the deletion code wasn’t being reached. Misdiagnosed where my error was, thought it was failing silently.

Answer 1

Mac OS X is a Unix, too. From the top of the linked documentation:

If not separately noted, all functions that claim “Availability: Unix”
are supported on Mac OS X, which builds on a Unix core.