Sworddragon added the comment:
It sounds like me that del dir_list does only delete the copied list while
del dir_list[:] accesses the reference and deletes this list. If I'm not
wrong with this assumption I think you was meaning dir_list instead of root_dir
in your post.
But thanks for the
Ned Deily added the comment:
Yes, I did indeed mean dir_list, not root_dir. Sorry for the confusion.
One point: there is no copied list. del dir_list merely deletes the
binding between the name dir_list and the list object returned by os.walk;
the list object itself is unaltered but can no
New submission from Sworddragon:
The following was tested on Linux. In the attachments is the example code and
here is my output:
sworddragon@ubuntu:/tmp$ ./test.py
1
I'm deleting the list of directories on every recursion and skipping if I'm
directly in /proc (which is theoretically
Ned Deily added the comment:
I think you are misunderstanding how del and mutable sequences work. In your
code snippet, the del unbinds the name root_dir but it does not alter the
dirnames list object returned by os.path. Try replacing del root_dir with
del root_dir[:] or root_dir.clear().
