Directory-tree listing in Python

Question

How do I get a list of all files (and directories) in a given directory in Python?

Answer 1

#import modules
import os

_CURRENT_DIR = '.'


def rec_tree_traverse(curr_dir, indent):
    "recurcive function to traverse the directory"
    #print "[traverse_tree]"

    try :
        dfList = [os.path.join(curr_dir, f_or_d) for f_or_d in os.listdir(curr_dir)]
    except:
        print "wrong path name/directory name"
        return

    for file_or_dir in dfList:

        if os.path.isdir(file_or_dir):
            #print "dir  : ",
            print indent, file_or_dir,"\\"
            rec_tree_traverse(file_or_dir, indent*2)

        if os.path.isfile(file_or_dir):
            #print "file : ",
            print indent, file_or_dir

    #end if for loop
#end of traverse_tree()

def main():

    base_dir = _CURRENT_DIR

    rec_tree_traverse(base_dir," ")

    raw_input("enter any key to exit....")
#end of main()


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Answer 2

The one worked with me is kind of a modified version from Saleh answer above.

The code is as follows:

"dir = 'given_directory_name' filenames = [os.path.abspath(os.path.join(dir,i)) for i in os.listdir(dir)]"

Answer 3

While os.listdir() is fine for generating a list of file and dir names, frequently you want to do more once you have those names - and in Python3, pathlib makes those other chores simple. Let's take a look and see if you like it as much as I do.

To list dir contents, construct a Path object and grab the iterator:

In [16]: Path('/etc').iterdir()
Out[16]: <generator object Path.iterdir at 0x110853fc0>

If we want just a list of names of things:

In [17]: [x.name for x in Path('/etc').iterdir()]
Out[17]:
['emond.d',
 'ntp-restrict.conf',
 'periodic',

If you want just the dirs:

In [18]: [x.name for x in Path('/etc').iterdir() if x.is_dir()]
Out[18]:
['emond.d',
 'periodic',
 'mach_init.d',

If you want the names of all conf files in that tree:

In [20]: [x.name for x in Path('/etc').glob('**/*.conf')]
Out[20]:
['ntp-restrict.conf',
 'dnsextd.conf',
 'syslog.conf',

If you want a list of conf files in the tree >= 1K:

In [23]: [x.name for x in Path('/etc').glob('**/*.conf') if x.stat().st_size > 1024]
Out[23]:
['dnsextd.conf',
 'pf.conf',
 'autofs.conf',

Resolving relative paths become easy:

In [32]: Path('../Operational Metrics.md').resolve()
Out[32]: PosixPath('/Users/starver/code/xxxx/Operational Metrics.md')

Navigating with a Path is pretty clear (although unexpected):

In [10]: p = Path('.')

In [11]: core = p / 'web' / 'core'

In [13]: [x for x in core.iterdir() if x.is_file()]
Out[13]:
[PosixPath('web/core/metrics.py'),
 PosixPath('web/core/services.py'),
 PosixPath('web/core/querysets.py'),

Answer 4

Try this:

import os
for top, dirs, files in os.walk('./'):
    for nm in files:       
        print os.path.join(top, nm)

Answer 5

You can use

os.listdir(path)

For reference and more os functions look here:

• Python 2 docs: https://docs.python.org/2/library/os.html#os.listdir
• Python 3 docs: https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#os.listdir

Answer 6

A recursive implementation

import os

def scan_dir(dir):
    for name in os.listdir(dir):
        path = os.path.join(dir, name)
        if os.path.isfile(path):
            print path
        else:
            scan_dir(path)