Is there a way to overwrite log files in python 2.x

Question

I'm using python2.x logging module, like,

logging.basicConfig(format='%(asctime)s %(message)s',
                datefmt='%m/%d/%Y %I:%M:%S %p',
                filename='logs.log',
                level=logging.INFO)

I want my program to overwrite logs.log file for each execution of the script, currently it just appends to old logs. I know the below code will overwrite, but if there is a way to do it via logging config, it'll look better.

with open("logs.log", 'w') as file:
  pass

Answer 1

Both

logging.basicConfig(format='%(asctime)s %(message)s',
                datefmt='%m/%d/%Y %I:%M:%S %p',
                filename='logs.log',
                filemode='w',
                level=logging.INFO)

and

logging.basicConfig(format='%(asctime)s %(message)s',
                datefmt='%m/%d/%Y %I:%M:%S %p',
                filename='logs.log',
                filemode='w+',
                level=logging.INFO)

always append in Python 2.7, on both Windows and Linux

Answer 2

The actual answer is to add the filemode = 'w' AND force = True parameter to basicConfig. What seems to be happening is that default handlers are setting the filemode to a for append. With filemode already set, logging doesn't bother to apply your requested filemode of w for write. Adding the force parameter disables all default handlers and uses all the parameters you specified instead.