I wanted a simple way to recursively move through directory tree and remove filenames containing a certain string

rm_r.py

#!/usr/bin/env python

import argparse
import os

# Handle command line args
try:
	arg_parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description = 'Will recursively traverse a directory tree,\
		and remove all files and directories that match any passed in regular expressions')
	arg_parser.add_argument('dir', help = 'dir to start tree traversal process')
	arg_parser.add_argument('search_str', help = 'search_str to compare against filenames to \
		determine if they get removed')
	# arg_parser.add_argument('-o', '--optional_arg', choices = ['opt1', 'opt2'], required = False)
	arg_parser.add_argument('-v', '--verbose', help='increase output verbosity', action='store_true')
	args = arg_parser.parse_args()
except Exception as e:
	print e
	raise Exception('[!] Error when parsing command line arguments')

starting_dir = args.dir
search_str = args.search_str
verbose = args.verbose
if os.path.isdir(starting_dir):
	dir_walker = os.walk(starting_dir)
	for a_walk in dir_walker:
		dir_files = a_walk[2]
		for filename in dir_files:
			if search_str in filename:
				try:
					filepath = os.path.join(a_walk[0], filename)
					os.remove(filepath)
					if verbose is True:
						print '[*] Removing\t{}'.format(filename)
				except Exception as e:
					print e
					print '[!] Error occured when removing {}'.format(filename)
else:
	raise Exception('[!] Expected {} to be a directory'.format(starting_dir))