> > I wonder why it couldn't use os.listdir to find out whether the directory is empty, and os.stat to find out whether a specific file or directory still exists.
> 
> It is possible to do the same thing with just os.listdir.  The use of
> the Find*File functions was chosen to eliminate duplicating the wait
> function for the two different cases.  Also,  it is just less resource
> and time intensive to use the Find*File API directly (no need to build
> an entire list when just testing if any entries exist).

But it's certainly much easier to maintain using regular Python APIs. We
would use ctypes if the functionality wasn't accessible from pure
Python, but since it is, we don't want to reinvent the wheel.