Python list all files with extension

Python Find Files with Extension (.txt): A Step-by-Step Guide

To find all files with a particular extension in Python, you can use the os.walk function to traverse the directory structure, and check if each file has the desired extension using the file.endswith() method.

For example, let’s find all the .txt files:

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

This will print the full path of all files with the .txt extension in the specified directory. You can replace the .txt with any other desired file extension.

If you’re looking for a quick answer, I’m sure the above will do!

But if you’re looking to improve your Python skills and want to learn how to recursively find files in a directory with subdirectories, keep on reading. This guide introduces you to 3 different methods you can use to find files of a particular type in Python.

Let’s jump into it!

3 Ways to Find All Files by Extension in Python

There are three main ways to find all the files by extension in Python.

Let’s take a closer look at how each of these approaches works.

1. The ‘glob’ Module

You can use the glob module in Python to find all files with the .txt extension using the following code:

import glob # Find all files with the .txt extension in the current directory txt_files = glob.glob('*.txt') # Print the names of the files found print(txt_files)

The glob.glob() function searches for all files in the current directory that match the specified pattern, which in this case is ‘*.txt’ . This tells the function to find all files with a name that ends in .txt . The result is a list of the names of the matching files.

You can also specify a different directory to search in by passing the path to the directory as the first argument to the glob.glob() function. For example, if you want to search for all .txt files in the /path/to/directory directory, run the following:

import glob # Find all files with the .txt extension in the specified directory txt_files = glob.glob('/path/to/directory/*.txt') # Print the names of the files found print(txt_files)

Example

Here’s an example project I have:

The above image shows the folder structure, but in case you need clarity, here’s what it looks like:

Let’s find all the text files (ending with ‘.txt’) in the folder.

To do this, let’s run the code from the previous section to see what happens:

import glob # Find all files with the .txt extension in the current directory txt_files = glob.glob('*.txt') # Print the names of the files found print(txt_files)

It returns the ‘ names.txt ‘ and ‘ values.txt ‘ files but not the text files in the subfolders. To list the files with a particular extension in the subfolders, you need to take a recursive approach.

2. Recursive Search with ‘os.listdir()’

As you saw in the earlier example, the glob.glob() function only searches for files in the specified directory and does not search in any of its subdirectories.

To search for files with a particular extension in the specified directory and all its subdirectories, you can use the os.listdir() function in a recursive manner.

Here’s an example implementation:

import os def find_files(dir_path, extension): # Check if the given path is a valid directory if not os.path.isdir(dir_path): return # Get a list of all the files and directories in the given directory files_and_dirs = os.listdir(dir_path) # Iterate over the list of files and directories for file_or_dir in files_and_dirs: # Construct the full path of the file or directory full_path = os.path.join(dir_path, file_or_dir) # If the full path is a directory, recursively call the function to find the files in that directory if os.path.isdir(full_path): find_files(full_path, extension) else: # If the full path is a file that ends with extension, print its path if full_path.endswith(extension): print(full_path)

This code defines a recursive function called find_files() that takes a directory path as its argument and searches for files in that directory and all its subdirectories.

It uses the os.listdir() function to get the names of all files and directories in the specified directory, and then uses the os.path.isdir() function to check if a given file or directory is a directory.

• If it is a directory, the function calls itself recursively to search for files with a specific extension in that directory.
• If it is a file, the function checks the extension and prints the file name out if it ends with the target extension.

Let’s call this function to see it in action.

Example

Let’s continue with the Example project folder with the following structure:

. ├── Data │ └── ages.txt │ └── numbers.txt ├── Images │ └── image.png ├── Samples │ └── codes.txt │ └── readme.txt ├── finder.py ├── names.txt └── values.txt

Our goal is to find all the .txt files in the entire folder (including the subfolders) by running a script in the finder.py file.

To do this, let’s copy the find_files function from the previous section to the finder.py file.

Let’s call the function by setting the current directory and the .txt as parameters.

./Data/numbers.txt ./Data/ages.txt ./Samples/readme.txt ./Samples/codes.txt ./names.txt ./values.txt

Awesome! This time the function not only found the text files at the same level as the python file but also the text files in the subfolders.

Even though this example offers great practice with recursion in Python, there’s an easier alternative for finding the files.

3. The ‘os.walk’ Function

The easiest way to recursively find all the files with a particular extension in a folder and its subfolders is by using the os.walk function.

Here’s what calling it might look like

import os for root, dirs, files in os.walk('/path/to/directory'): for file in files: if file.endswith('.someextension'): print(os.path.join(root, file))

This code imports the os module, which provides functions for interacting with the operating system. It then uses the os.walk() function to recursively iterate through all the directories and subdirectories within the specified directory (‘ /path/to/director y’).

For each directory in the tree, it sets three variables: root, dirs, and files. The root variable contains the path to the current directory, dirs is a list of subdirectories within that directory, and files is a list of files in the current directory.

It then loops through the list of files in the current directory and checks if each file ends with the specified extension. If it does, it prints the full path to that file using the os.path.join() function. This allows it to find all the files with the specified extension within the entire directory tree, not just the current directory.

This is a convenient replacement for the rather lengthy recursion approach from the earlier section.

Example

Let’s continue with the project structure you’ve already seen in this guide.

. ├── Data │ └── ages.txt │ └── numbers.txt ├── Images │ └── image.png ├── Samples │ └── codes.txt │ └── readme.txt ├── finder.py ├── names.txt └── values.txt

In particular, let’s find all the .txt files from the entire folder and its subfolders.

To do this, let’s modify the previously introduced code to target the current folder and to only show files with .txt extension:

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

Running finder.py with the above code shows all the files with .txt extension:

Summary

Today you learned how to find files with a specific extension in Python.

To take home, use the os.walk() function to recursively walk through folders and subfolders to find all the files with a particular extension.

Thanks for reading. Happy coding!

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How to Find all files in a Directory with specific extension in Python

Python comes with a standard module called os that is used to handle file management using Python. With the help of Python os modules, we can perform many file management tasks like creating, renaming, moving, copying, searching, and deleting files and directories. If you want to know more about Python file management with the os module then click here .

In this tutorial, we will not be covering all the important methods of the os module. Instead, we will be using it to find specific extension files from a directory. For example, we will be writing a python script that can find all the .txt, .doc, .py, .jgeg, etc., files from a specific directory.

Python program to find all the .txt files from a directory

We will start with finding all the .txt files present in a specific directory. For this tutorial, I will be searching all the .txt files present in the same directory where my Python script is located and printing the complete path as an output.

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

C:\Users\tsmehra\Desktop\code\data.txt C:\Users\tsmehra\Desktop\code\external_css.txt C:\Users\tsmehra\Desktop\code\external_script.txt C:\Users\tsmehra\Desktop\code\passwords_list.txt C:\Users\tsmehra\Desktop\code\vulnarable_banners.txt

The os.listdir() function will return a list of all the files and directories present in the current directory. The .endswith() is a Python string function that will check if a file ends with an extension of .txt . The os.getcwd() function returns the absolute path of the current working directory. The os.path.join() method will join the current working directory path with the file name. In the above example, I have listed all the .txt files that are present in the same directory where the Python script is located. If you want to find files of different directories there you need to change the working directory by using the os.chdir() method.

import os directory = r'C:\Users\tsmehra\Documents' os.chdir(directory) #change the current working directory for file in os.listdir(): if file.endswith(".txt"): print(os.path.join(os.getcwd(),file))

C:\Users\tsmehra\Documents\allnew.txt C:\Users\tsmehra\Documents\config.txt C:\Users\tsmehra\Documents\Python has many built.txt

It’s very important to use the r»» prefix before the directory name else we need to specify the escape characters.

Python program to find all the Python .py files from a directory

The program will remain the same. The only change we need to make in order to retrieve all the .py files is in the endswith() method.

import os #directory = r'' #os.chdir(directory) #change the current working directory for file in os.listdir(): if file.endswith(".py"): #only python .py files print(os.path.join(os.getcwd(),file))

C:\Users\tsmehra\Desktop\code\assambaly.py C:\Users\tsmehra\Desktop\code\attack.py C:\Users\tsmehra\Desktop\code\checkweather.py C:\Users\tsmehra\Desktop\code\client.py C:\Users\tsmehra\Desktop\code\colorful.py C:\Users\tsmehra\Desktop\code\compareimage.py C:\Users\tsmehra\Desktop\code\contours.py C:\Users\tsmehra\Desktop\code\crackpassword.py C:\Users\tsmehra\Desktop\code\CssJSlinks.py C:\Users\tsmehra\Desktop\code\dDosattqack.py C:\Users\tsmehra\Desktop\code\deconde.py C:\Users\tsmehra\Desktop\code\DecryptFile.py . 

Python program to find all the Images .jpeg, .jpg, .png files from a directory

Now let’s find all the images present in a specific directory. The code will remain pretty the same as we have written for the above examples, but here will be making some changes in the conditional if statement.

import os directory = r'C:\Users\tsmehra\Pictures' os.chdir(directory) #change the current working directory to pictures for file in os.listdir(): if file.split(".")[-1].lower() in ["apng", "avif", "gif","jpeg", "jpg", "png", "svg"]: print(os.path.join(os.getcwd(),file))

C:\Users\tsmehra\Pictures\Armstrong_Number_Python.jpg C:\Users\tsmehra\Pictures\Arrays-data-structure.png C:\Users\tsmehra\Pictures\arrays.png C:\Users\tsmehra\Pictures\atom.png C:\Users\tsmehra\Pictures\best python libraries 2021.jpg C:\Users\tsmehra\Pictures\blur faces with open cv.jpg C:\Users\tsmehra\Pictures\choosepython.jpg C:\Users\tsmehra\Pictures\contours image opencv python.jpg C:\Users\tsmehra\Pictures\contours on the blank image.jpg C:\Users\tsmehra\Pictures\coolpad python online copiler.jpg

Conclusion

Let’s sum up the above Python tutorial. In this tutorial, you learned how to find specific file extensions in Python. The module we used in our tutorial is os which is a Python standard module for file and directory management. If you are searching for the files that are present in the same directory of your Python script, then you do not need to change the working directory, but if you wish to find files from another directory there, you need to change the working directory using the os.chdir() method. The os.listdir() will list out all the directories and files present in the current working directory, and using the if statement and endswith() statement we can find the specific extension files.

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