Directory also sometimes known as a folder are unit organizational structure in a system’s file system for storing and locating files or more folders. Python as a scripting language provides various methods to iterate over files in a directory.
Below are the various approaches by using which one can iterate over files in a directory using python:
Method 1: os.listdir()
This function returns the list of files and subdirectories present in the given directory. We can filter the list to get only the files using os.path.isfile() function:
Example:
Python3
# import required moduleimport os# assign directorydirectory = 'files'# iterate over files in# that directoryfor filename in os.listdir(directory): f = os.path.join(directory, filename) # checking if it is a file if os.path.isfile(f): print(f) |
Output:
Method 2: os.scandir()
This method is used to get an iterator of os.DirEntry objects corresponding to the entries in the directory given by specified path.
Example:
Python3
# import required moduleimport os# assign directorydirectory = 'files'# iterate over files in# that directoryfor filename in os.scandir(directory): if filename.is_file(): print(filename.path) |
Output:
Method 3: pathlib module
We can iterate over files in a directory using Path.glob() function which glob the specified pattern in the given directory and yields the matching files. Path.glob(‘*’) yield all the files in the given directory
Example:
Python3
# import required modulefrom pathlib import Path# assign directorydirectory = 'files'# iterate over files in# that directoryfiles = Path(directory).glob('*')for file in files: print(file) |
Output:
Method 4: os.walk()
We can also search for subdirectories using this method as it yields a 3-tuple (dirpath, dirnames, filenames).
- root: Prints out directories only from what you specified.
- dirs: Prints out sub-directories from the root.
- files: Prints out all files from root and directories.
Python3
# import required moduleimport os# assign directorydirectory = 'files'# iterate over files in# that directoryfor root, dirs, files in os.walk(directory): for filename in files: print(os.path.join(root, filename)) |
Output:
Method 5: glob module
The glob.iglob() function returns an iterator over the list of pathnames that match the given pattern.
Example:
Python3
# import required moduleimport glob# assign directorydirectory = 'files'# iterate over files in# that directoryfor filename in glob.iglob(f'{directory}/*'): print(filename) |
Output:
