There are three similar Python modules that can be used to remove a directory.

• os.rmdir (this article) - remove a single directory (will fail if the directory is not empty)
• os.removedirs - remove parent and child directories (will fail if the directory is not empty)
• shutil.rmtree - remove parent and child directories (will remove even if directory is not empty)

Here is the minimal boilterplate code without error handling to remove the /usr/local/foo directory using os.rmdir.

#!/usr/bin/python3
import os
os.rmdir("/usr/local/foo")

Here is a more practical example, with try/except/else error handling.

#!/usr/bin/python3
import os

directory = "/usr/local/foo"

if not os.path.exists(directory):
  print(f"{directory} does not exists")
else:
  try:
    os.rmdir(directory)
  except Exception as exception:
    print(f"got the following exception when attempting to rmdir {directory} - {exception}")
  else:
    print(f"successfully removed directory {directory}")

Be aware that if the target directory contains files or directories, the removal will fail and something like this will be returned. For this reason, I almost always instead use shutil.rmtree to remove a directory.

[Errno 39] Directory not empty: '/usr/local/foo'