Bug report

Bug description:

shutil.rmtree() is documented to refuse a symbolic link to a directory, but the check is an lstat() of the path as given, so a trailing separator gets past it. rmtree('link/') deletes everything inside the link's target and then fails in the final rmdir(). The original symptom was fixed for the plain spelling in gh-46010.

import os, shutil, tempfile

tmp = tempfile.mkdtemp()
target = os.path.join(tmp, 'target')
os.mkdir(target)
open(os.path.join(target, 'file'), 'w').close()
link = os.path.join(tmp, 'link')
os.symlink(target, link)

for path in link, link + os.sep:
    try:
        shutil.rmtree(path)
    except OSError as exc:
        print(f'{type(exc).__name__}: {exc.strerror}')
    print(os.listdir(target))

Output:

OSError: None
['file']
NotADirectoryError: Not a directory
[]

The second call should fail with "Cannot call rmtree on a symbolic link" like the first and leave target alone.

CPython versions tested on:

CPython main branch

Operating systems tested on:

Linux

Linked PRs

• gh-160322: Refuse symlinks with a trailing separator in shutil.rmtree() #160323
• gh-160322: document shutil.rmtree("link/") symlink following behavior #160372
• [3.15] gh-160322: document shutil.rmtree("link/") symlink following behavior (GH-160372) #160393
• [3.14] gh-160322: document shutil.rmtree("link/") symlink following behavior (GH-160372) #160394