Force Overwrite in Os.Rename

Question

Is it possible to force a rename os.rename to overwrite another file if it already exists? For example in the code below if the file Tests.csv already exists it would be re

Answer 1

As the documentation says it's impossible to guarantee an atomic renaming operation on Windows if the file exists so what Python does is asking to do the double step os.remove + os.rename yourself, handling potential errors.

On unix systems rename overwrites the destination if exists (because the operation is guaranteed to be atomic).

Note that on windows it's also possible that deleting the destination file will fail even if you have permission because the file may be in use. This is another essential limitation of the windows file system and you have to handle it yourself in the code.