Directory-tree listing in Python

This is a way to traverse every file and directory in a directory tree:

import os

for dirname, dirnames, filenames in os.walk('.'):
    # print path to all subdirectories first.
    for subdirname in dirnames:
        print(os.path.join(dirname, subdirname))

    # print path to all filenames.
    for filename in filenames:
        print(os.path.join(dirname, filename))

    # Advanced usage:
    # editing the 'dirnames' list will stop os.walk() from recursing into there.
    if '.git' in dirnames:
        # don't go into any .git directories.
        dirnames.remove('.git')

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

Here's a helper function I use quite often:

import os

def listdir_fullpath(d):
    return [os.path.join(d, f) for f in os.listdir(d)]

import os

for filename in os.listdir("C:\\temp"):
    print  filename

Try this:

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

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'),

Here is another option.

os.scandir(path='.')

It returns an iterator of os.DirEntry objects corresponding to the entries (along with file attribute information) in the directory given by path.

Example:

with os.scandir(path) as it:
    for entry in it:
        if not entry.name.startswith('.'):
            print(entry.name)

Using scandir() instead of listdir() can significantly increase the performance of code that also needs file type or file attribute information, because os.DirEntry objects expose this information if the operating system provides it when scanning a directory. All os.DirEntry methods may perform a system call, but is_dir() and is_file() usually only require a system call for symbolic links; os.DirEntry.stat() always requires a system call on Unix but only requires one for symbolic links on Windows.

Python Docs

I know this is an old question. This is a neat way I came across if you are on a liunx machine.

import subprocess
print(subprocess.check_output(["ls", "/"]).decode("utf8"))

Easiest way:

list_output_files = [os.getcwd()+"\\"+f for f in os.listdir(os.getcwd())]