Find a file in python

Question

I have a file that may be in a different place on each user s machine  Is there a way to implement a search for the file  A way that I can pass the file s name and the directory tree to search in

User · Answer

In Python 3 4 or newer you can use pathlib to do recursive globbing    gt  gt  gt  import pathlib  gt  gt  gt  sorted pathlib Path      glob       py     PosixPath  build lib pathlib py     PosixPath  docs conf py     PosixPath  pathlib py     PosixPath  setup py     PosixPath  test pathlib py      Reference  https   docs python org 3 library pathlib html pathlib Path glob  In Python 3 5 or newer you can also do recursive globbing like this    gt  gt  gt  import glob  gt  gt  gt  glob glob       txt   recursive True    2 txt    sub 3 txt     Reference  https   docs python org 3 library glob html glob glob

User · Answer

I used a version of os walk and on a larger directory got times around 3 5 sec  I tried two random solutions with no great improvement  then just did   paths    line 2   for line in subprocess check output  find   -iname    txt    shell True  splitlines      While it s POSIX-only  I got 0 25 sec   From this  I believe it s entirely possible to optimise whole searching a lot in a platform-independent way  but this is where I stopped the research

User · Answer

If you are using Python on Ubuntu and you only want it to work on Ubuntu a substantially faster way is the use the terminal s locate program like this   import subprocess  def find files file name       command     locate   file name       output   subprocess Popen command  stdout subprocess PIPE  communicate   0      output   output decode        search results   output split   n        return search results   search results is a list of the absolute file paths  This is 10 000 s of times faster than the methods above and for one search I ve done it was  72 000 times faster

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os walk is the answer  this will find the first match   import os  def find name  path       for root  dirs  files in os walk path           if name in files              return os path join root  name    And this will find all matches   def find all name  path       result          for root  dirs  files in os walk path           if name in files              result append os path join root  name       return result   And this will match a pattern   import os  fnmatch def find pattern  path       result          for root  dirs  files in os walk path           for name in files              if fnmatch fnmatch name  pattern                   result append os path join root  name       return result  find    txt     path to dir

User · Answer

The answer is very similar to existing ones  but slightly optimized   So you can find any files or folders by pattern   def iter all pattern  path       return           os path join root  entry          for root  dirs  files in os walk path          for entry in dirs   files         if pattern match entry          either by substring   def iter all substring  path       return           os path join root  entry          for root  dirs  files in os walk path          for entry in dirs   files         if substring in entry         or using a predicate   def iter all predicate  path       return           os path join root  entry          for root  dirs  files in os walk path          for entry in dirs   files         if predicate entry          to search only files or only folders - replace    dirs   files     for example  with only    dirs    or only    files     depending on what you need   Regards

User · Answer

If you are working with Python 2 you have a problem with infinite recursion on windows caused by self-referring symlinks   This script will avoid following those  Note that this is windows-specific   import os from scandir import scandir import ctypes  def is sym link path         http   stackoverflow com a 35915819     FILE ATTRIBUTE REPARSE POINT   0x0400     return os path isdir path  and  ctypes windll kernel32 GetFileAttributesW unicode path    amp  FILE ATTRIBUTE REPARSE POINT   def find base  filenames       hits           def find in dir subdir direc           content   scandir direc          for entry in content              if entry name in filenames                  hits append os path join direc  entry name                elif entry is dir   and not is sym link os path join direc  entry name                    try                      find in dir subdir os path join direc  entry name                   except UnicodeDecodeError                      print  Could not resolve     os path join direc  entry name                      continue      if not os path exists base           return     else          find in dir subdir base       return hits   It returns a list with all paths that point to files in the filenames list  Usage   find  C        file1 abc    file2 abc    file3 abc    file4 abc    file5 abc

User · Answer

Below we use a boolean  first  argument to switch between first match and all matches  a default which is equivalent to  find   -name file     import  os  def find root  file  first False       for d  subD  f in os walk root           if file in f              print   0     1   format file  d               if first    True                  break

User · Answer

For fast  OS-independent search  use scandir  https   github com benhoyt scandir  readme  Read http   bugs python org issue11406 for details why

User · Answer

SARose s answer worked for me until I updated from Ubuntu 20 04 LTS  The slight change I made to his code makes it work on the latest Ubuntu release  import subprocess  def find files file name       command     locate         file name      output   subprocess Popen command  stdout subprocess PIPE  shell True  communicate   0      output   output decode       search results   output split   n       return search results

[python] Find a file in python

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