How do I tell a file from directory in Python?

Question

When using os.listdir method I need to tell which item in the resulting list is a directory or just a file.

I've faced a problem when I had to go through all the directories in this list, and then add a file in every single directory.

Is there a way to go through this list and remove all files from it? If it isn't possible to do with os.listdir, what method should I use instead?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Use os.path.isdir to filter out the directories. Possibly something like

dirs = filter(os.path.isdir, os.listdir('/path'))
for dir in dirs:
    # add your file

Answer 2

dirs = filter(os.path.isdir, os.listdir('/path'))

Note this won't work unless '/path' is the current working directory. os.listdir() returns leafnames, so you'll be asking “os.path.isdir('file.txt')”, and if the current directory is elsewhere you'll be looking at the wrong 'file.txt'.

os.path.join() should be used on the output of os.listdir() to obtain a complete filename.

children= [os.path.join('/path', child) for child in os.listdir('/path')]
directories= filter(os.path.isdir, children)

Answer 3

This might be faster:

current, dirs, files = os.walk('/path').next()

The list of directories will be in the dirs variable.