arcpy.Delete_management not deleting

Question

I'm struggling with deleting an mxd in a for loop. My code is:

    import arcpy, glob, os, datetime, time
    from time import strftime

    for filename3 in glob.glob(os.path.join(folderPath, "*.mxd")):

    fullpath = os.path.join(folderPath, filename3)
    basename, filename2 = os.path.split(fullpath)

    mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument(filename3)

    if os.path.isfile(fullpath):
        basename, filename2 = os.path.split(fullpath)


        (shortname, extension) = os.path.splitext(filename2)

    mxd.saveACopy(draftloc + "\\" + "SentToDraftOn(" + strftime("%d%b%y %Hh%Mm%Ss") + ")"+ "_" + shortname + extension)
    arcpy.Delete_management(mxd)

I'm trying to do some processing on each mxd in a directory and then I want to saveACopy to a new location and then delete the old mxd. I keep getting the following traceback error:

Object: Error in executing tool

I think it's an indentation thing, but I can't seem to figure it out. Can anyone suggest what I am missing?

Thanks, Mike

Answer 1

Delete_management deletes a file on the disk. mxd as you have it is a reference to a map object in Python (which happens to reference the .mxd on the disk you want to delete. Instead you want to delete the path (which you have as filename3).

Instead you should use:

del mxd #deletes the reference in Python
arcpy.Delete_management(filename3) #deletes the file off the disk

Answer 2

The lines after the for loop won't execute since they are indented. if you want to loop through then the subsequent code needs to be fixed