Find all files in a directory with extension .txt in Python

Question

How can I find all the files in a directory having the extension .txt in python?

Answer 1

You can use glob:

import glob, os
os.chdir("/mydir")
for file in glob.glob("*.txt"):
    print(file)

or simply os.listdir:

import os
for file in os.listdir("/mydir"):
    if file.endswith(".txt"):
        print(os.path.join("/mydir", file))

or if you want to traverse directory, use os.walk:

import os
for root, dirs, files in os.walk("/mydir"):
    for file in files:
        if file.endswith(".txt"):
             print(os.path.join(root, file))

Answer 2

Use glob.

>>> import glob
>>> glob.glob('./*.txt')
['./outline.txt', './pip-log.txt', './test.txt', './testingvim.txt']

Answer 3

Something like that should do the job

for root, dirs, files in os.walk(directory):
    for file in files:
        if file.endswith('.txt'):
            print(file)

Answer 4

Something like this will work:

>>> import os
>>> path = '/usr/share/cups/charmaps'
>>> text_files = [f for f in os.listdir(path) if f.endswith('.txt')]
>>> text_files
['euc-cn.txt', 'euc-jp.txt', 'euc-kr.txt', 'euc-tw.txt', ... 'windows-950.txt']

Answer 5

You can simply use pathlibs glob ¹:

import pathlib

list(pathlib.Path('your_directory').glob('*.txt'))

or in a loop:

for txt_file in pathlib.Path('your_directory').glob('*.txt'):
    # do something with "txt_file"

If you want it recursive you can use .glob('**/*.txt')

---

¹The pathlib module was included in the standard library in python 3.4. But you can install back-ports of that module even on older Python versions (i.e. using conda or pip): pathlib and pathlib2.

Answer 6

import os

path = 'mypath/path' 
files = os.listdir(path)

files_txt = [i for i in files if i.endswith('.txt')]

Answer 7

I like os.walk():

import os

for root, dirs, files in os.walk(dir):
    for f in files:
        if os.path.splitext(f)[1] == '.txt':
            fullpath = os.path.join(root, f)
            print(fullpath)

Or with generators:

import os

fileiter = (os.path.join(root, f)
    for root, _, files in os.walk(dir)
    for f in files)
txtfileiter = (f for f in fileiter if os.path.splitext(f)[1] == '.txt')
for txt in txtfileiter:
    print(txt)

Answer 8

Here's more versions of the same that produce slightly different results:

glob.iglob()

import glob
for f in glob.iglob("/mydir/*/*.txt"): # generator, search immediate subdirectories 
    print f

glob.glob1()

print glob.glob1("/mydir", "*.tx?")  # literal_directory, basename_pattern

fnmatch.filter()

import fnmatch, os
print fnmatch.filter(os.listdir("/mydir"), "*.tx?") # include dot-files

Answer 9

Try this this will find all your files recursively:

import glob, os
os.chdir("H:\\wallpaper")# use whatever directory you want

#double\\ no single \

for file in glob.glob("**/*.txt", recursive = True):
    print(file)

Answer 10

Python v3.5+

Fast method using os.scandir in a recursive function. Searches for all files with a specified extension in folder and sub-folders. It is fast, even for finding 10,000s of files.

I have also included a function to convert the output to a Pandas Dataframe.

import os
import re
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np


def findFilesInFolderYield(path,  extension, containsTxt='', subFolders = True, excludeText = ''):
    """  Recursive function to find all files of an extension type in a folder (and optionally in all subfolders too)

    path:               Base directory to find files
    extension:          File extension to find.  e.g. 'txt'.  Regular expression. Or  'ls\d' to match ls1, ls2, ls3 etc
    containsTxt:        List of Strings, only finds file if it contains this text.  Ignore if '' (or blank)
    subFolders:         Bool.  If True, find files in all subfolders under path. If False, only searches files in the specified folder
    excludeText:        Text string.  Ignore if ''. Will exclude if text string is in path.
    """
    if type(containsTxt) == str: # if a string and not in a list
        containsTxt = [containsTxt]
    
    myregexobj = re.compile('\.' + extension + '$')    # Makes sure the file extension is at the end and is preceded by a .
    
    try:   # Trapping a OSError or FileNotFoundError:  File permissions problem I believe
        for entry in os.scandir(path):
            if entry.is_file() and myregexobj.search(entry.path): # 
    
                bools = [True for txt in containsTxt if txt in entry.path and (excludeText == '' or excludeText not in entry.path)]
    
                if len(bools)== len(containsTxt):
                    yield entry.stat().st_size, entry.stat().st_atime_ns, entry.stat().st_mtime_ns, entry.stat().st_ctime_ns, entry.path
    
            elif entry.is_dir() and subFolders:   # if its a directory, then repeat process as a nested function
                yield from findFilesInFolderYield(entry.path,  extension, containsTxt, subFolders)
    except OSError as ose:
        print('Cannot access ' + path +'. Probably a permissions error ', ose)
    except FileNotFoundError as fnf:
        print(path +' not found ', fnf)

def findFilesInFolderYieldandGetDf(path,  extension, containsTxt, subFolders = True, excludeText = ''):
    """  Converts returned data from findFilesInFolderYield and creates and Pandas Dataframe.
    Recursive function to find all files of an extension type in a folder (and optionally in all subfolders too)

    path:               Base directory to find files
    extension:          File extension to find.  e.g. 'txt'.  Regular expression. Or  'ls\d' to match ls1, ls2, ls3 etc
    containsTxt:        List of Strings, only finds file if it contains this text.  Ignore if '' (or blank)
    subFolders:         Bool.  If True, find files in all subfolders under path. If False, only searches files in the specified folder
    excludeText:        Text string.  Ignore if ''. Will exclude if text string is in path.
    """
    
    fileSizes, accessTimes, modificationTimes, creationTimes , paths  = zip(*findFilesInFolderYield(path,  extension, containsTxt, subFolders))
    df = pd.DataFrame({
            'FLS_File_Size':fileSizes,
            'FLS_File_Access_Date':accessTimes,
            'FLS_File_Modification_Date':np.array(modificationTimes).astype('timedelta64[ns]'),
            'FLS_File_Creation_Date':creationTimes,
            'FLS_File_PathName':paths,
                  })
    
    df['FLS_File_Modification_Date'] = pd.to_datetime(df['FLS_File_Modification_Date'],infer_datetime_format=True)
    df['FLS_File_Creation_Date'] = pd.to_datetime(df['FLS_File_Creation_Date'],infer_datetime_format=True)
    df['FLS_File_Access_Date'] = pd.to_datetime(df['FLS_File_Access_Date'],infer_datetime_format=True)

    return df

ext =   'txt'  # regular expression 
containsTxt=[]
path = 'C:\myFolder'
df = findFilesInFolderYieldandGetDf(path,  ext, containsTxt, subFolders = True)

Answer 11

path.py is another alternative: https://github.com/jaraco/path.py

from path import path
p = path('/path/to/the/directory')
for f in p.files(pattern='*.txt'):
    print f

Answer 12

Python has all tools to do this:

import os

the_dir = 'the_dir_that_want_to_search_in'
all_txt_files = filter(lambda x: x.endswith('.txt'), os.listdir(the_dir))

Answer 13

To get all '.txt' file names inside 'dataPath' folder as a list in a Pythonic way:

from os import listdir
from os.path import isfile, join
path = "/dataPath/"
onlyTxtFiles = [f for f in listdir(path) if isfile(join(path, f)) and  f.endswith(".txt")]
print onlyTxtFiles

Answer 14

I did a test (Python 3.6.4, W7x64) to see which solution is the fastest for one folder, no subdirectories, to get a list of complete file paths for files with a specific extension.

To make it short, for this task os.listdir() is the fastest and is 1.7x as fast as the next best: os.walk() (with a break!), 2.7x as fast as pathlib, 3.2x faster than os.scandir() and 3.3x faster than glob.
Please keep in mind, that those results will change when you need recursive results. If you copy/paste one method below, please add a .lower() otherwise .EXT would not be found when searching for .ext.

import os
import pathlib
import timeit
import glob

def a():
    path = pathlib.Path().cwd()
    list_sqlite_files = [str(f) for f in path.glob("*.sqlite")]

def b(): 
    path = os.getcwd()
    list_sqlite_files = [f.path for f in os.scandir(path) if os.path.splitext(f)[1] == ".sqlite"]

def c():
    path = os.getcwd()
    list_sqlite_files = [os.path.join(path, f) for f in os.listdir(path) if f.endswith(".sqlite")]

def d():
    path = os.getcwd()
    os.chdir(path)
    list_sqlite_files = [os.path.join(path, f) for f in glob.glob("*.sqlite")]

def e():
    path = os.getcwd()
    list_sqlite_files = [os.path.join(path, f) for f in glob.glob1(str(path), "*.sqlite")]

def f():
    path = os.getcwd()
    list_sqlite_files = []
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(path):
        for file in files:
            if file.endswith(".sqlite"):
                list_sqlite_files.append( os.path.join(root, file) )
        break



print(timeit.timeit(a, number=1000))
print(timeit.timeit(b, number=1000))
print(timeit.timeit(c, number=1000))
print(timeit.timeit(d, number=1000))
print(timeit.timeit(e, number=1000))
print(timeit.timeit(f, number=1000))

Results:

# Python 3.6.4
0.431
0.515
0.161
0.548
0.537
0.274

Answer 15

import os
import sys 

if len(sys.argv)==2:
    print('no params')
    sys.exit(1)

dir = sys.argv[1]
mask= sys.argv[2]

files = os.listdir(dir); 

res = filter(lambda x: x.endswith(mask), files); 

print res

Answer 16

To get an array of ".txt" file names from a folder called "data" in the same directory I usually use this simple line of code:

import os
fileNames = [fileName for fileName in os.listdir("data") if fileName.endswith(".txt")]

Answer 17

This code makes my life simpler.

import os
fnames = ([file for root, dirs, files in os.walk(dir)
    for file in files
    if file.endswith('.txt') #or file.endswith('.png') or file.endswith('.pdf')
    ])
for fname in fnames: print(fname)

Answer 18

Use fnmatch: https://docs.python.org/2/library/fnmatch.html

import fnmatch
import os

for file in os.listdir('.'):
    if fnmatch.fnmatch(file, '*.txt'):
        print file

Answer 19

A copy-pastable solution similar to the one of ghostdog:

def get_all_filepaths(root_path, ext):
    """
    Search all files which have a given extension within root_path.

    This ignores the case of the extension and searches subdirectories, too.

    Parameters
    ----------
    root_path : str
    ext : str

    Returns
    -------
    list of str

    Examples
    --------
    >>> get_all_filepaths('/run', '.lock')
    ['/run/unattended-upgrades.lock',
     '/run/mlocate.daily.lock',
     '/run/xtables.lock',
     '/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock.lock',
     '/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432.lock',
     '/run/network/.ifstate.lock',
     '/run/lock/asound.state.lock']
    """
    import os
    all_files = []
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(root_path):
        for filename in files:
            if filename.lower().endswith(ext):
                all_files.append(os.path.join(root, filename))
    return all_files

You can also use yield to create a generator and thus avoid assembling the complete list:

def get_all_filepaths(root_path, ext):
    import os
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(root_path):
        for filename in files:
            if filename.lower().endswith(ext):
                yield os.path.join(root, filename)

Answer 20

I suggest you to use fnmatch and the upper method. In this way you can find any of the following:

1. Name.txt;
2. Name.TXT;
3. Name.Txt

.

import fnmatch
import os

    for file in os.listdir("/Users/Johnny/Desktop/MyTXTfolder"):
        if fnmatch.fnmatch(file.upper(), '*.TXT'):
            print(file)

Answer 21

Here's one with extend()

types = ('*.jpg', '*.png')
images_list = []
for files in types:
    images_list.extend(glob.glob(os.path.join(path, files)))

Answer 22

Functional solution with sub-directories:

from fnmatch import filter
from functools import partial
from itertools import chain
from os import path, walk

print(*chain(*(map(partial(path.join, root), filter(filenames, "*.txt")) for root, _, filenames in walk("mydir"))))

Answer 23

In case the folder contains a lot of files or memory is an constraint, consider using generators:

def yield_files_with_extensions(folder_path, file_extension):
   for _, _, files in os.walk(folder_path):
       for file in files:
           if file.endswith(file_extension):
               yield file

Option A: Iterate

for f in yield_files_with_extensions('.', '.txt'): 
    print(f)

Option B: Get all

files = [f for f in yield_files_with_extensions('.', '.txt')]

Answer 24

use Python OS module to find files with specific extension.

the simple example is here :

import os

# This is the path where you want to search
path = r'd:'  

# this is extension you want to detect
extension = '.txt'   # this can be : .jpg  .png  .xls  .log .....

for root, dirs_list, files_list in os.walk(path):
    for file_name in files_list:
        if os.path.splitext(file_name)[-1] == extension:
            file_name_path = os.path.join(root, file_name)
            print file_name
            print file_name_path   # This is the full path of the filter file

Answer 25

Many users have replied with os.walk answers, which includes all files but also all directories and subdirectories and their files.

import os


def files_in_dir(path, extension=''):
    """
       Generator: yields all of the files in <path> ending with
       <extension>

       \param   path       Absolute or relative path to inspect,
       \param   extension  [optional] Only yield files matching this,

       \yield              [filenames]
    """


    for _, dirs, files in os.walk(path):
        dirs[:] = []  # do not recurse directories.
        yield from [f for f in files if f.endswith(extension)]

# Example: print all the .py files in './python'
for filename in files_in_dir('./python', '*.py'):
    print("-", filename)

Or for a one off where you don't need a generator:

path, ext = "./python", ext = ".py"
for _, _, dirfiles in os.walk(path):
    matches = (f for f in dirfiles if f.endswith(ext))
    break

for filename in matches:
    print("-", filename)

If you are going to use matches for something else, you may want to make it a list rather than a generator expression:

    matches = [f for f in dirfiles if f.endswith(ext)]