Question

I need to create a temp directory that will house another named directory and subfiles. In the end the named directory and subfiles will be appended to a tarball and the temp directory can be removed. Was initially going to use mkdtemp() but it looks like the TemporaryDirectory() method removes itself? Can someone explain the differences.

Answer 1

You are correct in that the only real difference is that TemporaryDirectory will delete itself when it is done. It will let you do something like:

with tempfile.TemporaryDirectory() as dir:
   do_stuff_with(dir)

when you leave the scope of the with, the temporary directory will be deleted. With mkdtemp, you would need to do that manually.