`os.removedirs()` should define whether it follows symlinks

Documentation

Many functions in os do not properly specify whether or not they follow symlinks. The Files and Directories even slightly implies that the default is more to follow symlinks (and only with follow_symlinks=False not).

For some functions (like os.rmdir() one might argue this is not important because they're the counterparts of well-known POSIX/C functions and for them it's well-defined.

But e.g. os.removedirs() seem to have no such counterpart and since the documentation doesn't mention anything, the current behaviour (which AFAICS is not following symlinks) might just be some implementation detail.

For os.removedirs() there are even two interesting cases in e.g. os.removedirs("a/b/c/d"):

• if d (i.e. the final pathname component) is a symlink to a directory the referred directory is not removed (at least not in the current code, which uses os.rmdir() on the pathname)
• if e.g. b is a symlink to a directory, which contains only c/d, then b is followed when rmdiring a/b/c/d and a/b/c but is not followed when rmdiring a/b (and the target of b isn’t removed).

All this kinda follows the spirit of POSIX' pathname resolution, but still it would IMO be nice to have it clearly defined.

Cheers,
Chris.

Start with the Files and Directories section of the Python documentation and the entries for os.removedirs() and os.rmdir(). Document whether os.removedirs() follows symlinks for final and intermediate path components, so the behavior described in the issue is explicit and consistent with the documented semantics.