While os.listdir()
is fine for generating a list of file and dir names, frequently you want to do more once you have those names - and in Python3, pathlib makes those other chores simple. Let's take a look and see if you like it as much as I do.
To list dir contents, construct a Path object and grab the iterator:
In [16]: Path('/etc').iterdir()
Out[16]: <generator object Path.iterdir at 0x110853fc0>
If we want just a list of names of things:
In [17]: [x.name for x in Path('/etc').iterdir()]
Out[17]:
['emond.d',
'ntp-restrict.conf',
'periodic',
If you want just the dirs:
In [18]: [x.name for x in Path('/etc').iterdir() if x.is_dir()]
Out[18]:
['emond.d',
'periodic',
'mach_init.d',
If you want the names of all conf files in that tree:
In [20]: [x.name for x in Path('/etc').glob('**/*.conf')]
Out[20]:
['ntp-restrict.conf',
'dnsextd.conf',
'syslog.conf',
If you want a list of conf files in the tree >= 1K:
In [23]: [x.name for x in Path('/etc').glob('**/*.conf') if x.stat().st_size > 1024]
Out[23]:
['dnsextd.conf',
'pf.conf',
'autofs.conf',
Resolving relative paths become easy:
In [32]: Path('../Operational Metrics.md').resolve()
Out[32]: PosixPath('/Users/starver/code/xxxx/Operational Metrics.md')
Navigating with a Path is pretty clear (although unexpected):
In [10]: p = Path('.')
In [11]: core = p / 'web' / 'core'
In [13]: [x for x in core.iterdir() if x.is_file()]
Out[13]:
[PosixPath('web/core/metrics.py'),
PosixPath('web/core/services.py'),
PosixPath('web/core/querysets.py'),