Most pythonic way to delete a file which may not exist

I prefer to suppress an exception rather than checking for the file's existence, to avoid a TOCTTOU bug. Matt's answer is a good example of this, but we can simplify it slightly under Python 3, using contextlib.suppress():

import contextlib

with contextlib.suppress(FileNotFoundError):
    os.remove(filename)

If filename is a pathlib.Path object instead of a string, we can call its .unlink() method instead of using os.remove(). In my experience, Path objects are more useful than strings for filesystem manipulation.

Since everything in this answer is exclusive to Python 3, it provides yet another reason to upgrade.

As of Python 3.8, use pathlib.Path.unlink with the missing_ok=True kwarg (docs here).

Otherwise, a try/except block is the best way to do it as it is thread-safe (unlike an if/else block that checks if the file exists). In Python 3.3, the FileNotFoundError was introduced as a subclass of OSError specific to the file not existing and in Python 3.4 pathlib was added as a cleaner way to deal with the file system. So...

import pathlib  # Python >= 3.4
import os       # Python < 3.4

# Python 3.8+
pathlib.Path("./dir/file.txt").unlink(missing_ok=True)

# Python 3.4-3.7
try:
    pathlib.Path("./dir/file.txt").unlink()
except FileNotFoundError:
    pass

# Python 3.3
try:
    os.remove("./dir/file.txt")
except FileNotFoundError:
    pass

# Python 3.2 and earlier
try:
    os.remove("./dir/file.txt")
except OSError:
    pass
    

os.path.exists returns True for folders as well as files. Consider using os.path.isfile to check for whether the file exists instead.

In the spirit of Andy Jones' answer, how about an authentic ternary operation:

os.remove(fn) if os.path.exists(fn) else None

if os.path.exists(filename): os.remove(filename)

is a one-liner.

Many of you may disagree - possibly for reasons like considering the proposed use of ternaries "ugly" - but this begs the question of whether we should listen to people used to ugly standards when they call something non-standard "ugly".

Matt's answer is the right one for older Pythons and Kevin's the right answer for newer ones.

If you wish not to copy the function for silentremove, this functionality is exposed in path.py as remove_p:

from path import Path
Path(filename).remove_p()

Another way to know if the file (or files) exists, and to remove it, is using the module glob.

from glob import glob
import os

for filename in glob("*.csv"):
    os.remove(filename)

Glob finds all the files that could select the pattern with a *nix wildcard, and loops the list.

Since Python 3.3 you can use FileNotFoundError which is more correct than the accepted version since it doesn't ignore other possible errors.

try:
    os.remove(filename)
except FileNotFoundError:
    pass

In Python 3.4 or later version, the pythonic way would be:

import os
from contextlib import suppress

with suppress(OSError):
    os.remove(filename)

Something like this? Takes advantage of short-circuit evaluation. If the file does not exist, the whole conditional cannot be true, so python will not bother evaluation the second part.

os.path.exists("gogogo.php") and os.remove("gogogo.php")

A KISS offering:

def remove_if_exists(filename):
  if os.path.exists(filename):
    os.remove(filename)

And then:

remove_if_exists("my.file")

This is another solution:

if os.path.isfile(os.path.join(path, filename)):
    os.remove(os.path.join(path, filename))

If glob is available.

for file in glob.glob("file/matching/pattern/*.csv"):
    os.remove(file)