Python pathlib: Traverse Files in a Directory – Python Tutorial

In this tutorial, we will use some examples to show you how to traverse files in a directory using python pathlib library.

Here are also other ways to traverse files in python, they are:

Python Traverse Files in a Directory for Beginners

Python Traverse Files in a Directory Using glob Library: A Beginner Guide

Traverse files not in subdirectory

For example, we will get all .py files in current directory, we can do as follows:

import pathlib

def getFiles(path='.', filetype = ".py"):
    files = pathlib.Path(path).glob('*'+filetype)
    for px in files:
        print(px)
        with open(px, 'r') as f:
            print(f.readlines())
getFiles()

Run this code, you will get this result:

loss.py
attlayer.py
model_bilstm_cnn_word2vec.py
fileutil.py

However, if we also want to get all .py files that are in subdirectories? How to do?

Traverse files that are in subdirectories

We can use code example to implement it.

import pathlib

def getFiles(path='.', filetype = ".py"):

    files = pathlib.Path(path).glob('**/*'+filetype)
    for px in files:
        print(px)

getFiles()

Run this code, we will get all .py files in current directory.

Here is a list:

attlayer.py
model_bilstm_cnn_word2vec.py
fileutil.py
data_prepare/intent_train_data_prepare.py
data_prepare/intent_reason_train_data_prepare.py
data_intent_prepare/intent_train_data_prepare.py