os.walk without digging into directories below

Question

How do I limit os.walk to only return files in the directory I provide it?

def _dir_list(self, dir_name, whitelist):
    outputList = []
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(dir_name):
        for f in files:
            if os.path.splitext(f)[1] in whitelist:
                outputList.append(os.path.join(root, f))
            else:
                self._email_to_("ignore")
    return outputList

Answer 1

If you have more complex requirements than just the top directory (eg ignore VCS dirs etc), you can also modify the list of directories to prevent os.walk recursing through them.

ie:

def _dir_list(self, dir_name, whitelist):
    outputList = []
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(dir_name):
        dirs[:] = [d for d in dirs if is_good(d)]
        for f in files:
            do_stuff()

Note - be careful to mutate the list, rather than just rebind it. Obviously os.walk doesn't know about the external rebinding.

Answer 2

Use the walklevel function.

import os

def walklevel(some_dir, level=1):
    some_dir = some_dir.rstrip(os.path.sep)
    assert os.path.isdir(some_dir)
    num_sep = some_dir.count(os.path.sep)
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(some_dir):
        yield root, dirs, files
        num_sep_this = root.count(os.path.sep)
        if num_sep + level <= num_sep_this:
            del dirs[:]

It works just like os.walk, but you can pass it a level parameter that indicates how deep the recursion will go.

Answer 3

for path, dirs, files in os.walk('.'):
    print path, dirs, files
    del dirs[:] # go only one level deep

Answer 4

There is a catch when using listdir. The os.path.isdir(identifier) must be an absolute path. To pick subdirectories you do:

for dirname in os.listdir(rootdir):
  if os.path.isdir(os.path.join(rootdir, dirname)):
     print("I got a subdirectory: %s" % dirname)

The alternative is to change to the directory to do the testing without the os.path.join().

Answer 5

You could use os.listdir() which returns a list of names (for both files and directories) in a given directory. If you need to distinguish between files and directories, call os.stat() on each name.

Answer 6

Felt like throwing my 2 pence in.

baselevel = len(rootdir.split("\\"))
for subdirs, dirs, files in os.walk(rootdir):
    curlevel = len(subdirs.split("\\"))
    if curlevel <= baselevel + 1:
        [do stuff]