How do I check whether a file exists without exceptions

Question

How do I check if a file exists or not  without using the try statement

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Unlike isfile    exists   will return True for directories  So depending on if you want only plain files or also directories  you ll use isfile   or exists    Here is some simple REPL output    gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   etc password txt   True  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   etc   False  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   does not exist   False  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   etc password txt   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   etc   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   does not exist   False

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How do I check whether a file exists  using Python  without using a try statement    Now available since Python 3 4  import and instantiate a Path object with the file name  and check the is file method  note that this returns True for symlinks pointing to regular files as well     gt  gt  gt  from pathlib import Path  gt  gt  gt  Path      is file   False  gt  gt  gt  Path   initrd img   is file   True  gt  gt  gt  Path   doesnotexist   is file   False   If you re on Python 2  you can backport the pathlib module from pypi  pathlib2  or otherwise check isfile from the os path module    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile      False  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   initrd img   True  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   doesnotexist   False   Now the above is probably the best pragmatic direct answer here  but there s the possibility of a race condition  depending on what you re trying to accomplish   and the fact that the underlying implementation uses a try  but Python uses try everywhere in its implementation    Because Python uses try everywhere  there s really no reason to avoid an implementation that uses it   But the rest of this answer attempts to consider these caveats   Longer  much more pedantic answer  Available since Python 3 4  use the new Path object in pathlib  Note that  exists is not quite right  because directories are not files  except in the unix sense that everything is a file     gt  gt  gt  from pathlib import Path  gt  gt  gt  root   Path       gt  gt  gt  root exists   True   So we need to use is file    gt  gt  gt  root is file   False   Here s the help on is file   is file self      Whether this path is a regular file  also True for symlinks pointing     to regular files     So let s get a file that we know is a file    gt  gt  gt  import tempfile  gt  gt  gt  file   tempfile NamedTemporaryFile    gt  gt  gt  filepathobj   Path file name   gt  gt  gt  filepathobj is file   True  gt  gt  gt  filepathobj exists   True   By default  NamedTemporaryFile deletes the file when closed  and will automatically close when no more references exist to it     gt  gt  gt  del file  gt  gt  gt  filepathobj exists   False  gt  gt  gt  filepathobj is file   False   If you dig into the implementation  though  you ll see that is file uses try   def is file self               Whether this path is a regular file  also True for symlinks pointing     to regular files               try          return S ISREG self stat   st mode      except OSError as e          if e errno not in  ENOENT  ENOTDIR               raise           Path doesn t exist or is a broken symlink            see https   bitbucket org pitrou pathlib issue 12           return False   Race Conditions  Why we like try  We like try because it avoids race conditions  With try  you simply attempt to read your file  expecting it to be there  and if not  you catch the exception and perform whatever fallback behavior makes sense   If you want to check that a file exists before you attempt to read it  and you might be deleting it and then you might be using multiple threads or processes  or another program knows about that file and could delete it - you risk the chance of a race condition if you check it exists  because you are then racing to open it before its condition  its existence  changes    Race conditions are very hard to debug because there s a very small window in which they can cause your program to fail   But if this is your motivation  you can get the value of a try statement by using the suppress context manager   Avoiding race conditions without a try statement  suppress  Python 3 4 gives us the suppress context manager  previously the ignore context manager   which does semantically exactly the same thing in fewer lines  while also  at least superficially  meeting the original ask to avoid a try statement   from contextlib import suppress from pathlib import Path   Usage    gt  gt  gt  with suppress OSError   Path  doesnotexist   open   as f          for line in f              print line        gt  gt  gt   gt  gt  gt  with suppress OSError           Path  doesnotexist   unlink         gt  gt  gt     For earlier Pythons  you could roll your own suppress  but without a try will be more verbose than with  I do believe this actually is the only answer that doesn t use try at any level in the Python that can be applied to prior to Python 3 4 because it uses a context manager instead   class suppress object       def   init   self   exceptions           self exceptions   exceptions     def   enter   self           return self     def   exit   self  exc type  exc value  traceback           if exc type is not None              return issubclass exc type  self exceptions    Perhaps easier with a try   from contextlib import contextmanager   contextmanager def suppress  exceptions       try          yield     except exceptions          pass   Other options that don t meet the ask for  without try    isfile  import os os path isfile path    from the docs      os path isfile path       Return True if path is an existing regular file  This follows symbolic   links  so both islink   and isfile   can be true for the same path    But if you examine the source of this function  you ll see it actually does use a try statement      This follows symbolic links  so both islink   and isdir   can be true   for the same path on systems that support symlinks def isfile path          Test whether a path is a regular file        try          st   os stat path      except os error          return False     return stat S ISREG st st mode      gt  gt  gt  OSError is os error True   All it s doing is using the given path to see if it can get stats on it   catching OSError and then checking if it s a file if it didn t raise the exception   If you intend to do something with the file  I would suggest directly attempting it with a try-except to avoid a race condition   try      with open path  as f          f read   except OSError      pass   os access  Available for Unix and Windows is os access  but to use you must pass flags  and it does not differentiate between files and directories  This is more used to test if the real invoking user has access in an elevated privilege environment   import os os access path  os F OK    It also suffers from the same race condition problems as isfile  From the docs      Note    Using access   to check if a user is authorized to e g  open a file   before actually doing so using open   creates a security hole  because   the user might exploit the short time interval between checking and   opening the file to manipulate it  It   s preferable to use EAFP   techniques  For example   if os access  myfile   os R OK       with open  myfile   as fp          return fp read   return  some default data        is better written as   try      fp   open  myfile   except IOError as e      if e errno    errno EACCES          return  some default data        Not a permission error      raise else      with fp          return fp read      Avoid using os access  It is a low level function that has more opportunities for user error than the higher level objects and functions discussed above   Criticism of another answer   Another answer says this about os access      Personally  I prefer this one because under the hood  it calls native APIs  via    PYTHON SRC DIR  Modules posixmodule c    but it also opens a gate for possible user errors  and it s not as Pythonic as other variants    This answer says it prefers a non-Pythonic  error-prone method  with no justification  It seems to encourage users to use low-level APIs without understanding them    It also creates a context manager which  by unconditionally returning True  allows all Exceptions  including KeyboardInterrupt and SystemExit   to pass silently  which is a good way to hide bugs   This seems to encourage users to adopt poor practices

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Here s a 1 line Python command for the Linux command line environment  I find this VERY HANDY since I m not such a hot Bash guy   python -c  import os path  print os path isfile   path to file xxx      I hope this is helpful

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import os    for testing purpose args defaulted to current folder  amp  file     returns True if file found def file exists FOLDER PATH        FILE NAME   file         return os path isdir FOLDER PATH            and os path isfile os path join FOLDER PATH  FILE NAME     Basically a folder check  then a file check with proper directory separator using os path join

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Although I always recommend using try and except statements  here are a few possibilities for you  my personal favourite is using os access     Try opening the file   Opening the file will always verify the existence of the file  You can make a function just like so   def File Existence filepath       f   open filepath      return True   If it s False  it will stop execution with an unhanded IOError or OSError in later versions of Python  To catch the exception  you have to use a try except clause  Of course  you can always use a try except  statement like so  thanks to hsandt for making me think    def File Existence filepath       try          f   open filepath      except IOError  OSError    Note OSError is for later versions of Python         return False      return True  Use os path exists path    This will check the existence of what you specify  However  it checks for files and directories so beware about how you use it   import os path  gt  gt  gt  os path exists  this is a directory   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists  this is a file txt   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists  not a directory   False  Use os access path  mode    This will check whether you have access to the file  It will check for permissions  Based on the os py documentation  typing in os F OK  it will check the existence of the path  However  using this will create a security hole  as someone can attack your file using the time between checking the permissions and opening the file  You should instead go directly to opening the file instead of checking its permissions   EAFP vs LBYP   If you re not going to open the file afterwards  and only checking its existence  then you can use this   Anyway  here    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os access   is a file txt   os F OK  True    I should also mention that there are two ways that you will not be able to verify the existence of a file  Either the issue will be permission denied or no such file or directory  If you catch an IOError  set the IOError as e  like my first option   and then type in print e args  so that you can hopefully determine your issue  I hope it helps

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import os path  if os path isfile filepath      print  quot File exists quot

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Unlike isfile    exists   will return True for directories  So depending on if you want only plain files or also directories  you ll use isfile   or exists    Here is some simple REPL output    gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   etc password txt   True  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   etc   False  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   does not exist   False  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   etc password txt   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   etc   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   does not exist   False

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Python 3 4  has an object-oriented path module  pathlib   Using this new module  you can check whether a file exists like this  import pathlib p   pathlib Path  path to file   if p is file       or p is dir   to see if it is a directory       do stuff  You can  and usually should  still use a try except block when opening files  try      with p open   as f            do awesome stuff except OSError      print  Well darn     The pathlib module has lots of cool stuff in it  convenient globbing  checking file s owner  easier path joining  etc   It s worth checking out   If you re on an older Python  version 2 6 or later   you can still install pathlib with pip    installs pathlib2 on older Python versions   the original third-party module  pathlib  is no longer maintained  pip install pathlib2  Then import it as follows    Older Python versions import pathlib2 as pathlib

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Date 2017-12-04  Every possible solution has been listed in other answers   An intuitive and arguable way to check if a file exists is the following   import os os path isfile    file md      Returns True if exists  else False   additionaly check a dir os path isdir    folder      Returns True if the folder exists  else False   check either a dir or a file os path exists    file     I made an exhaustive cheatsheet for your reference    os path methods in exhaustive cheatsheet   definition     dirname                   basename                   abspath                   relpath                   commonpath                   normpath                   realpath     operation     split    splitdrive    splitext                   join    normcase     compare     samefile    sameopenfile    samestat     condition     isdir                  isfile                  exists                  lexists                 islink                  isabs                  ismount       expand     expanduser                expandvars      stat     getatime    getctime    getmtime              getsize

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import os path    path to dir  root dirs files   os walk path  next   if myfile in files     print  yes it exists    This is helpful when checking for several files  Or you want to do a set intersection  subtraction with an existing list

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Use the following code  def findfile self  filepath    flag   false   for filename in os listdir filepath      if filename     quot your file name quot        flag   true       break     else        print  quot no file found quot     if flag    true      return true   else      return false

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Unlike isfile    exists   will return True for directories  So depending on if you want only plain files or also directories  you ll use isfile   or exists    Here is some simple REPL output    gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   etc password txt   True  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   etc   False  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   does not exist   False  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   etc password txt   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   etc   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   does not exist   False

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If the reason you re checking is so you can do something like if file exists  open it    it s safer to use a try around the attempt to open it  Checking and then opening risks the file being deleted or moved or something between when you check and when you try to open it   If you re not planning to open the file immediately  you can use os path isfile     Return True if path is an existing regular file  This follows symbolic links  so both islink   and isfile   can be true for the same path    import os path os path isfile fname     if you need to be sure it s a file   Starting with Python 3 4  the pathlib module offers an object-oriented approach  backported to pathlib2 in Python 2 7    from pathlib import Path  my file   Path   path to file   if my file is file          file exists   To check a directory  do   if my file is dir          directory exists   To check whether a Path object exists independently of whether is it a file or directory  use exists     if my file exists          path exists   You can also use resolve strict True  in a try block   try      my abs path   my file resolve strict True  except FileNotFoundError        doesn t exist else        exists

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import os os path exists path    Returns whether the path  directory or file  exists or not os path isfile path    Returns whether the file exists or not

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You can write Brian s suggestion without the try    from contextlib import suppress  with suppress IOError   open  filename        process     suppress is part of Python 3 4  In older releases you can quickly write your own suppress   from contextlib import contextmanager   contextmanager def suppress  exceptions       try          yield     except exceptions          pass

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You have the os path exists function   import os path os path exists file path    This returns True for both files and directories but you can instead use  os path isfile file path    to test if it s a file specifically  It follows symlinks

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I m the author of a package that s been around for about 10 years  and it has a function that addresses this question directly  Basically  if you are on a non-Windows system  it uses Popen to access find   However  if you are on Windows  it replicates find with an efficient filesystem walker   The code itself does not use a try block    except in determining the operating system and thus steering you to the  Unix -style find or the hand-buillt find  Timing tests showed that the try was faster in determining the OS  so I did use one there  but nowhere else     gt  gt  gt  import pox  gt  gt  gt  pox find   python    type  file   root pox homedir    recurse False     Users mmckerns  python     And the doc      gt  gt  gt  print pox find   doc   find patterns  root recurse type    Get path to a file or directory      patterns  name or partial name string of items to search for     root  path string of top-level directory to search     recurse  if True  recurse down from root directory     type  item filter  one of  None  file  dir  link  socket  block  char      verbose  if True  be a little verbose about the search      On some OS  recursion can be specified by recursion depth  an integer       patterns can be specified with basic pattern matching  Additionally      multiple patterns can be specified by splitting patterns with a         For example           gt  gt  gt  find  pox    root                  Users foo pox pox     Users foo pox scripts pox launcher py             gt  gt  gt  find   shutils   init               Users foo pox pox shutils py     Users foo pox pox   init   py     gt  gt  gt    The implementation  if you care to look  is here  https   github com uqfoundation pox blob 89f90fb308f285ca7a62eabe2c38acb87e89dad9 pox shutils py L190

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Unlike isfile    exists   will return True for directories  So depending on if you want only plain files or also directories  you ll use isfile   or exists    Here is some simple REPL output    gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   etc password txt   True  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   etc   False  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   does not exist   False  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   etc password txt   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   etc   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   does not exist   False

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Additionally  os access     if os access  myfile   os R OK       with open  myfile   as fp          return fp read     Being R OK  W OK  and X OK the flags to test for permissions  doc

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It doesn t seem like there s a meaningful functional difference between try except and isfile    so you should use which one makes sense   If you want to read a file  if it exists  do  try      f   open filepath  except IOError      print  Oh dear     But if you just wanted to rename a file if it exists  and therefore don t need to open it  do  if os path isfile filepath       os rename filepath  filepath     old     If you want to write to a file  if it doesn t exist  do    python 2 if not os path isfile filepath       f   open filepath   w      python 3  x opens for exclusive creation  failing if the file already exists try      f   open filepath   wx   except IOError      print  file already exists    If you need file locking  that s a different matter

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This is the simplest way to check if a file exists  Just because the file existed when you checked doesn t guarantee that it will be there when you need to open it   import os fname    foo txt  if os path isfile fname       print  file does exist at this time   else      print  no such file exists at this time

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I m the author of a package that s been around for about 10 years  and it has a function that addresses this question directly  Basically  if you are on a non-Windows system  it uses Popen to access find   However  if you are on Windows  it replicates find with an efficient filesystem walker   The code itself does not use a try block    except in determining the operating system and thus steering you to the  Unix -style find or the hand-buillt find  Timing tests showed that the try was faster in determining the OS  so I did use one there  but nowhere else     gt  gt  gt  import pox  gt  gt  gt  pox find   python    type  file   root pox homedir    recurse False     Users mmckerns  python     And the doc      gt  gt  gt  print pox find   doc   find patterns  root recurse type    Get path to a file or directory      patterns  name or partial name string of items to search for     root  path string of top-level directory to search     recurse  if True  recurse down from root directory     type  item filter  one of  None  file  dir  link  socket  block  char      verbose  if True  be a little verbose about the search      On some OS  recursion can be specified by recursion depth  an integer       patterns can be specified with basic pattern matching  Additionally      multiple patterns can be specified by splitting patterns with a         For example           gt  gt  gt  find  pox    root                  Users foo pox pox     Users foo pox scripts pox launcher py             gt  gt  gt  find   shutils   init               Users foo pox pox shutils py     Users foo pox pox   init   py     gt  gt  gt    The implementation  if you care to look  is here  https   github com uqfoundation pox blob 89f90fb308f285ca7a62eabe2c38acb87e89dad9 pox shutils py L190

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if os path isfile path to file       try           open path to file              pass     except IOError as e          print  Unable to open file       Raising exceptions is considered to be an acceptable  and Pythonic    approach for flow control in your program  Consider handling missing   files with IOErrors  In this situation  an IOError exception will be   raised if the file exists but the user does not have read permissions    SRC  http   www pfinn net python-check-if-file-exists html

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You should definitely use this one  from os path import exists  if exists  quot file quot      True      print  quot File exists  quot  elif exists  quot file quot      False      print  quot File doesn t exist  quot

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You can use os listdir to check if a file is in a certain directory   import os if  file ext  in os listdir  dirpath         code

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If the reason you re checking is so you can do something like if file exists  open it    it s safer to use a try around the attempt to open it  Checking and then opening risks the file being deleted or moved or something between when you check and when you try to open it   If you re not planning to open the file immediately  you can use os path isfile     Return True if path is an existing regular file  This follows symbolic links  so both islink   and isfile   can be true for the same path    import os path os path isfile fname     if you need to be sure it s a file   Starting with Python 3 4  the pathlib module offers an object-oriented approach  backported to pathlib2 in Python 2 7    from pathlib import Path  my file   Path   path to file   if my file is file          file exists   To check a directory  do   if my file is dir          directory exists   To check whether a Path object exists independently of whether is it a file or directory  use exists     if my file exists          path exists   You can also use resolve strict True  in a try block   try      my abs path   my file resolve strict True  except FileNotFoundError        doesn t exist else        exists

User · Answer

Unlike isfile    exists   will return True for directories  So depending on if you want only plain files or also directories  you ll use isfile   or exists    Here is some simple REPL output    gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   etc password txt   True  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   etc   False  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   does not exist   False  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   etc password txt   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   etc   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   does not exist   False

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TL DR To quickly check the existence of a file or a folder  use the Path module  Here is a single line code  after import   from pathlib import Path if Path  quot myfile txt quot   exists      works for both file and folders       do stuffs     The pathlib module was introduced in Python 3 4  so you need to have Python 3 4   this lib makes your life much easier and it is pretty to use  here is more doc about it  https   docs python org 3 library pathlib html   BTW  if you are going to reuse the path  then it is better to assign it to a variable so will become from pathlib import Path p   Path  quot loc of myfile txt quot   if p exists      works for both file and folders       do stuffs

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In 2016 the best way is still using os path isfile    gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   path to some file txt     Or in Python 3 you can use pathlib   import pathlib path   pathlib Path   path to some file txt   if path is file

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Additionally  os access     if os access  myfile   os R OK       with open  myfile   as fp          return fp read     Being R OK  W OK  and X OK the flags to test for permissions  doc

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You could try this  safer    try        http   effbot org zone python-with-statement htm        with  is safer to open a file     with open  whatever txt   as fh            Do something with  fh  except IOError as e      print        format e     The ouput would be        Errno 2  No such file or directory     whatever txt     Then  depending on the result  your program can just keep running from there or you can code to stop it if you want

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Check file or directory exists  You can follow these three ways      Note1  The os path isfile used only for files   import os path os path isfile filename    True if file exists os path isfile dirname    False if directory exists      Note2  The os path exists used for both files and directories   import os path os path exists filename    True if file exists os path exists dirname   True if directory exists      The pathlib Path method  included in Python 3   installable with pip for Python 2    from pathlib import Path Path filename  exists

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import os os path exists path    Returns whether the path  directory or file  exists or not os path isfile path    Returns whether the file exists or not

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import os os path exists path    Returns whether the path  directory or file  exists or not os path isfile path    Returns whether the file exists or not

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Here s a 1 line Python command for the Linux command line environment  I find this VERY HANDY since I m not such a hot Bash guy   python -c  import os path  print os path isfile   path to file xxx      I hope this is helpful

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use os path exists   to get file exist or not   path     home ie SachinSaga scripts subscription unit reader file   def file check at location filename       return os path exists path   str filename  replace            file name  dummy txt  responce   file check at location file name   if responce     print  file found at location   else     print  file not found at location

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In 2016 the best way is still using os path isfile    gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   path to some file txt     Or in Python 3 you can use pathlib   import pathlib path   pathlib Path   path to some file txt   if path is file

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You have the os path exists function   import os path os path exists file path    This returns True for both files and directories but you can instead use  os path isfile file path    to test if it s a file specifically  It follows symlinks

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Testing for files and folders with os path isfile    os path isdir   and os path exists    Assuming that the  path  is a valid path  this table shows what is returned by each function for files and folders     You can also test if a file is a certain type of file using os path splitext   to get the extension  if you don t already know it    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  path    path to a word document   gt  gt  gt  os path isfile path  True  gt  gt  gt  os path splitext path  1       docx    test if the extension is  docx True

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Although almost every possible way has been listed in  at least one of  the existing answers  e g  Python 3 4 specific stuff was added   I ll try to group everything together   Note  every piece of Python standard library code that I m going to post  belongs to version 3 5 3   Problem statement    Check file  arguable  also folder   special  file     existence Don t use try   except   else   finally blocks   Possible solutions       Python 3   os path exists path   also check other function family members like os path isfile  os path isdir  os path lexists for slightly different behaviors   os path exists path       Return True if path refers to an existing path or an open file descriptor  Returns False for broken symbolic links  On some platforms  this function may return False if permission is not granted to execute os stat   on the requested file  even if the path physically exists    All good  but if following the import tree    os path - posixpath py  ntpath py    genericpath py  line   20   def exists path          Test whether a path exists   Returns False for broken symbolic links        try          st   os stat path      except os error          return False     return True     it s just a try   except block around  Python 3   os stat path     dir fd None  follow symlinks True   So  your code is try   except free  but lower in the framestack there s  at least  one such block  This also applies to other funcs  including os path isfile    1 1   Python 3   Path is file     It s a fancier  and more pythonic  way of handling paths  but Under the hood  it does exactly the same thing  pathlib py  line   1330    def is file self               Whether this path is a regular file  also True for symlinks pointing     to regular files               try          return S ISREG self stat   st mode      except OSError as e          if e errno not in  ENOENT  ENOTDIR               raise           Path doesn t exist or is a broken symlink            see https   bitbucket org pitrou pathlib issue 12           return False    Python 3   With Statement Context Managers  Either    Create one   class Swallow     Dummy example     swallowed exceptions    FileNotFoundError        def   enter   self           print  Entering           def   exit   self  exc type  exc value  exc traceback           print  Exiting    exc type  exc value  exc traceback          return exc type in Swallow swallowed exceptions    only swallow FileNotFoundError  not e g  TypeError - if the user passes a wrong argument like None or float or         And its usage - I ll replicate the os path isfile behavior  note that this is just for demonstrating purposes  do not attempt to write such code for production    import os import stat   def isfile seaman path      Dummy func     result   False     with Swallow            result   stat S ISREG os stat path  st mode      return result   Use  Python 3   contextlib suppress  exceptions  - which was specifically designed for selectively suppressing exceptions   But  they seem to be wrappers over try   except   else   finally blocks  as  Python 3   The with statement states      This allows common try   except   finally usage patterns to be encapsulated for convenient reuse   Filesystem traversal functions  and search the results for matching item s      Python 3   os listdir path       or  Python 3   os scandir path      on Python v3 5   backport   PyPI   scandir    Under the hood  both use    Nix   man7   OPENDIR 3     man7   READDIR 3     man7   CLOSEDIR 3  Win   MS Docs   FindFirstFileW function    MS Docs   FindNextFileW function    MS Docs   FindClose function   via  GitHub   python cpython -  master  cpython Modules posixmodule c      Using scandir   instead of listdir   can significantly increase the performance of code that also needs file type or file attribute information  because os DirEntry objects expose this information if the operating system provides it when scanning a directory  All os DirEntry methods may perform a system call  but is dir   and is file   usually only require a system call for symbolic links  os DirEntry stat   always requires a system call on Unix but only requires one for symbolic links on Windows    Python 3   os walk top  topdown True  onerror None  followlinks False    It uses os listdir  os scandir when available    Python 3   glob iglob pathname     recursive False   or its predecessor  glob glob    Doesn t seem a traversing function per se  at least in some cases   but it still uses os listdir    Since these iterate over folders   in most of the cases  they are inefficient for our problem  there are exceptions  like non wildcarded globbing - as  ShadowRanger pointed out   so I m not going to insist on them  Not to mention that in some cases  filename processing might be required   Python 3   os access path  mode     dir fd None  effective ids False  follow symlinks True  whose behavior is close to os path exists  actually it s wider  mainly because of the 2nd argument    user permissions might restrict the file  visibility  as the doc states         test if the invoking user has the specified access to path  mode should be F OK to test the existence of path       os access   tmp   os F OK   Since I also work in C  I use this method as well because under the hood  it calls native APIs  again  via    PYTHON SRC DIR  Modules posixmodule c    but it also opens a gate for possible user errors  and it s not as Pythonic as other variants  So  as  AaronHall rightly pointed out  don t use it unless you know what you re doing    Nix   man7   ACCESS 2       pay attention to the note about the security hole its usage might introduce      Win   MS Docs   GetFileAttributesW function   Note  calling native APIs is also possible via  Python 3   ctypes - A foreign function library for Python  but in most cases it s more complicated    Win specific   Since vcruntime   msvcr    dll exports a  MS Docs    access   waccess function family as well  here s an example    Python 3 5 3  v3 5 3 1880cb95a742  Jan 16 2017  16 02 32   MSC v 1900 64 bit  AMD64   on win32 Type  help    copyright    credits  or  license  for more information   gt  gt  gt  import os  ctypes  gt  gt  gt  ctypes CDLL  msvcrt    waccess u C   Windows  System32  cmd exe   os F OK  0  gt  gt  gt  ctypes CDLL  msvcrt    waccess u C   Windows  System32  cmd exe notexist   os F OK  -1    Notes    Although it s not a good practice  I m using os F OK in the call  but that s just for clarity  its value is 0  I m using  waccess so that the same code works on Python3 and Python2  in spite of unicode related differences between them  Although this targets a very specific area  it was not mentioned in any of the previous answers   The Lnx  Ubtu  16 x64   counterpart as well    Python 3 5 2  default  Nov 17 2016  17 05 23   GCC 5 4 0 20160609  on linux Type  help    copyright    credits  or  license  for more information   gt  gt  gt  import os  ctypes  gt  gt  gt  ctypes CDLL   lib x86 64-linux-gnu libc so 6   access b  tmp   os F OK  0  gt  gt  gt  ctypes CDLL   lib x86 64-linux-gnu libc so 6   access b  tmp notexist   os F OK  -1    Notes    Instead hardcoding libc s path    lib x86 64-linux-gnu libc so 6   which may  and most likely  will  vary across systems  None  or the empty string  can be passed to CDLL constructor  ctypes CDLL None  access b  tmp   os F OK    According to  man7   DLOPEN 3       If filename is NULL  then the returned handle is for the main   program   When given to dlsym    this handle causes a search for a   symbol in the main program  followed by all shared objects loaded at   program startup  and then all shared objects loaded by dlopen   with   the flag RTLD GLOBAL     Main  current  program  python  is linked against libc  so its symbols  including access  will be loaded This has to be handled with care  since functions like main  Py Main and  all the  others are available  calling them could have disastrous effects  on the current program  This doesn t also apply to Win  but that s not such a big deal  since msvcrt dll is located in   SystemRoot  System32  which is in  PATH  by default   I wanted to take things further and replicate this behavior on Win  and submit a patch   but as it turns out   MS Docs   GetProcAddress function only  sees  exported symbols  so unless someone declares the functions in the main executable as   declspec dllexport   why on Earth the regular person would do that    the main program is loadable but pretty much unusable   Install some third-party module with filesystem capabilities  Most likely  will rely on one of the ways above  maybe with slight customizations   One example would be  again  Win specific   GitHub   mhammond pywin32 - Python for Windows  pywin32  Extensions  which is a Python wrapper over WINAPIs   But  since this is more like a workaround  I m stopping here  Another  lame  workaround  gainarie  is  as I like to call it   the sysadmin approach  use Python as a wrapper to execute shell commands   Win     py35x64 test  e  Work Dev StackOverflow q000082831 gt  e  Work Dev VEnvs py35x64 test Scripts python exe  -c  import os  print os system  dir  b   C   Windows  System32  cmd exe    gt  nul 2 gt  amp 1     0   py35x64 test  e  Work Dev StackOverflow q000082831 gt  e  Work Dev VEnvs py35x64 test Scripts python exe  -c  import os  print os system  dir  b   C   Windows  System32  cmd exe notexist    gt  nul 2 gt  amp 1     1   Nix  Lnx  Ubtu       cfati cfati-ubtu16x64-0    gt  python3 -c  import os  print os system  ls    tmp    gt   dev null 2 gt  amp 1     0  cfati cfati-ubtu16x64-0    gt  python3 -c  import os  print os system  ls    tmp notexist    gt   dev null 2 gt  amp 1     512      Bottom line    Do use try   except   else   finally blocks  because they can prevent you running into a series of nasty problems  A counter-example that I can think of  is performance  such blocks are costly  so try not to place them in code that it s supposed to run hundreds of thousands times per second  but since  in most cases  it involves disk access  it won t be the case     Final note s     I will try to keep it up to date  any suggestions are welcome  I will incorporate anything useful that will come up into the answer

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You can use the  OS  library of Python    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os path exists  C   Users        Desktop  test txt    True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists  C   Users        Desktop  test tx   False

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Unlike isfile    exists   will return True for directories  So depending on if you want only plain files or also directories  you ll use isfile   or exists    Here is some simple REPL output    gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   etc password txt   True  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   etc   False  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   does not exist   False  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   etc password txt   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   etc   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   does not exist   False

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import os    for testing purpose args defaulted to current folder  amp  file     returns True if file found def file exists FOLDER PATH        FILE NAME   file         return os path isdir FOLDER PATH            and os path isfile os path join FOLDER PATH  FILE NAME     Basically a folder check  then a file check with proper directory separator using os path join

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import os path  if os path isfile filepath      print  quot File exists quot

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How do I check whether a file exists  using Python  without using a try statement    Now available since Python 3 4  import and instantiate a Path object with the file name  and check the is file method  note that this returns True for symlinks pointing to regular files as well     gt  gt  gt  from pathlib import Path  gt  gt  gt  Path      is file   False  gt  gt  gt  Path   initrd img   is file   True  gt  gt  gt  Path   doesnotexist   is file   False   If you re on Python 2  you can backport the pathlib module from pypi  pathlib2  or otherwise check isfile from the os path module    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile      False  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   initrd img   True  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   doesnotexist   False   Now the above is probably the best pragmatic direct answer here  but there s the possibility of a race condition  depending on what you re trying to accomplish   and the fact that the underlying implementation uses a try  but Python uses try everywhere in its implementation    Because Python uses try everywhere  there s really no reason to avoid an implementation that uses it   But the rest of this answer attempts to consider these caveats   Longer  much more pedantic answer  Available since Python 3 4  use the new Path object in pathlib  Note that  exists is not quite right  because directories are not files  except in the unix sense that everything is a file     gt  gt  gt  from pathlib import Path  gt  gt  gt  root   Path       gt  gt  gt  root exists   True   So we need to use is file    gt  gt  gt  root is file   False   Here s the help on is file   is file self      Whether this path is a regular file  also True for symlinks pointing     to regular files     So let s get a file that we know is a file    gt  gt  gt  import tempfile  gt  gt  gt  file   tempfile NamedTemporaryFile    gt  gt  gt  filepathobj   Path file name   gt  gt  gt  filepathobj is file   True  gt  gt  gt  filepathobj exists   True   By default  NamedTemporaryFile deletes the file when closed  and will automatically close when no more references exist to it     gt  gt  gt  del file  gt  gt  gt  filepathobj exists   False  gt  gt  gt  filepathobj is file   False   If you dig into the implementation  though  you ll see that is file uses try   def is file self               Whether this path is a regular file  also True for symlinks pointing     to regular files               try          return S ISREG self stat   st mode      except OSError as e          if e errno not in  ENOENT  ENOTDIR               raise           Path doesn t exist or is a broken symlink            see https   bitbucket org pitrou pathlib issue 12           return False   Race Conditions  Why we like try  We like try because it avoids race conditions  With try  you simply attempt to read your file  expecting it to be there  and if not  you catch the exception and perform whatever fallback behavior makes sense   If you want to check that a file exists before you attempt to read it  and you might be deleting it and then you might be using multiple threads or processes  or another program knows about that file and could delete it - you risk the chance of a race condition if you check it exists  because you are then racing to open it before its condition  its existence  changes    Race conditions are very hard to debug because there s a very small window in which they can cause your program to fail   But if this is your motivation  you can get the value of a try statement by using the suppress context manager   Avoiding race conditions without a try statement  suppress  Python 3 4 gives us the suppress context manager  previously the ignore context manager   which does semantically exactly the same thing in fewer lines  while also  at least superficially  meeting the original ask to avoid a try statement   from contextlib import suppress from pathlib import Path   Usage    gt  gt  gt  with suppress OSError   Path  doesnotexist   open   as f          for line in f              print line        gt  gt  gt   gt  gt  gt  with suppress OSError           Path  doesnotexist   unlink         gt  gt  gt     For earlier Pythons  you could roll your own suppress  but without a try will be more verbose than with  I do believe this actually is the only answer that doesn t use try at any level in the Python that can be applied to prior to Python 3 4 because it uses a context manager instead   class suppress object       def   init   self   exceptions           self exceptions   exceptions     def   enter   self           return self     def   exit   self  exc type  exc value  traceback           if exc type is not None              return issubclass exc type  self exceptions    Perhaps easier with a try   from contextlib import contextmanager   contextmanager def suppress  exceptions       try          yield     except exceptions          pass   Other options that don t meet the ask for  without try    isfile  import os os path isfile path    from the docs      os path isfile path       Return True if path is an existing regular file  This follows symbolic   links  so both islink   and isfile   can be true for the same path    But if you examine the source of this function  you ll see it actually does use a try statement      This follows symbolic links  so both islink   and isdir   can be true   for the same path on systems that support symlinks def isfile path          Test whether a path is a regular file        try          st   os stat path      except os error          return False     return stat S ISREG st st mode      gt  gt  gt  OSError is os error True   All it s doing is using the given path to see if it can get stats on it   catching OSError and then checking if it s a file if it didn t raise the exception   If you intend to do something with the file  I would suggest directly attempting it with a try-except to avoid a race condition   try      with open path  as f          f read   except OSError      pass   os access  Available for Unix and Windows is os access  but to use you must pass flags  and it does not differentiate between files and directories  This is more used to test if the real invoking user has access in an elevated privilege environment   import os os access path  os F OK    It also suffers from the same race condition problems as isfile  From the docs      Note    Using access   to check if a user is authorized to e g  open a file   before actually doing so using open   creates a security hole  because   the user might exploit the short time interval between checking and   opening the file to manipulate it  It   s preferable to use EAFP   techniques  For example   if os access  myfile   os R OK       with open  myfile   as fp          return fp read   return  some default data        is better written as   try      fp   open  myfile   except IOError as e      if e errno    errno EACCES          return  some default data        Not a permission error      raise else      with fp          return fp read      Avoid using os access  It is a low level function that has more opportunities for user error than the higher level objects and functions discussed above   Criticism of another answer   Another answer says this about os access      Personally  I prefer this one because under the hood  it calls native APIs  via    PYTHON SRC DIR  Modules posixmodule c    but it also opens a gate for possible user errors  and it s not as Pythonic as other variants    This answer says it prefers a non-Pythonic  error-prone method  with no justification  It seems to encourage users to use low-level APIs without understanding them    It also creates a context manager which  by unconditionally returning True  allows all Exceptions  including KeyboardInterrupt and SystemExit   to pass silently  which is a good way to hide bugs   This seems to encourage users to adopt poor practices

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How do I check whether a file exists  without using the try statement    In 2016  this is still arguably the easiest way to check if both a file exists and if it is a file   import os os path isfile    file txt        Returns True if exists  else False   isfile is actually just a helper method that internally uses os stat and stat S ISREG mode  underneath  This os stat is a lower-level method that will provide you with detailed information about files  directories  sockets  buffers  and more  More about os stat here  Note  However  this approach will not lock the file in any way and therefore your code can become vulnerable to  time of check to time of use   TOCTTOU  bugs   So raising exceptions is considered to be an acceptable  and Pythonic  approach for flow control in your program  And one should consider handling missing files with IOErrors  rather than if statements  just an advice

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You can use the following open method to check if a file exists   readable   file   open inputFile   r   file close

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Although almost every possible way has been listed in  at least one of  the existing answers  e g  Python 3 4 specific stuff was added   I ll try to group everything together   Note  every piece of Python standard library code that I m going to post  belongs to version 3 5 3   Problem statement    Check file  arguable  also folder   special  file     existence Don t use try   except   else   finally blocks   Possible solutions       Python 3   os path exists path   also check other function family members like os path isfile  os path isdir  os path lexists for slightly different behaviors   os path exists path       Return True if path refers to an existing path or an open file descriptor  Returns False for broken symbolic links  On some platforms  this function may return False if permission is not granted to execute os stat   on the requested file  even if the path physically exists    All good  but if following the import tree    os path - posixpath py  ntpath py    genericpath py  line   20   def exists path          Test whether a path exists   Returns False for broken symbolic links        try          st   os stat path      except os error          return False     return True     it s just a try   except block around  Python 3   os stat path     dir fd None  follow symlinks True   So  your code is try   except free  but lower in the framestack there s  at least  one such block  This also applies to other funcs  including os path isfile    1 1   Python 3   Path is file     It s a fancier  and more pythonic  way of handling paths  but Under the hood  it does exactly the same thing  pathlib py  line   1330    def is file self               Whether this path is a regular file  also True for symlinks pointing     to regular files               try          return S ISREG self stat   st mode      except OSError as e          if e errno not in  ENOENT  ENOTDIR               raise           Path doesn t exist or is a broken symlink            see https   bitbucket org pitrou pathlib issue 12           return False    Python 3   With Statement Context Managers  Either    Create one   class Swallow     Dummy example     swallowed exceptions    FileNotFoundError        def   enter   self           print  Entering           def   exit   self  exc type  exc value  exc traceback           print  Exiting    exc type  exc value  exc traceback          return exc type in Swallow swallowed exceptions    only swallow FileNotFoundError  not e g  TypeError - if the user passes a wrong argument like None or float or         And its usage - I ll replicate the os path isfile behavior  note that this is just for demonstrating purposes  do not attempt to write such code for production    import os import stat   def isfile seaman path      Dummy func     result   False     with Swallow            result   stat S ISREG os stat path  st mode      return result   Use  Python 3   contextlib suppress  exceptions  - which was specifically designed for selectively suppressing exceptions   But  they seem to be wrappers over try   except   else   finally blocks  as  Python 3   The with statement states      This allows common try   except   finally usage patterns to be encapsulated for convenient reuse   Filesystem traversal functions  and search the results for matching item s      Python 3   os listdir path       or  Python 3   os scandir path      on Python v3 5   backport   PyPI   scandir    Under the hood  both use    Nix   man7   OPENDIR 3     man7   READDIR 3     man7   CLOSEDIR 3  Win   MS Docs   FindFirstFileW function    MS Docs   FindNextFileW function    MS Docs   FindClose function   via  GitHub   python cpython -  master  cpython Modules posixmodule c      Using scandir   instead of listdir   can significantly increase the performance of code that also needs file type or file attribute information  because os DirEntry objects expose this information if the operating system provides it when scanning a directory  All os DirEntry methods may perform a system call  but is dir   and is file   usually only require a system call for symbolic links  os DirEntry stat   always requires a system call on Unix but only requires one for symbolic links on Windows    Python 3   os walk top  topdown True  onerror None  followlinks False    It uses os listdir  os scandir when available    Python 3   glob iglob pathname     recursive False   or its predecessor  glob glob    Doesn t seem a traversing function per se  at least in some cases   but it still uses os listdir    Since these iterate over folders   in most of the cases  they are inefficient for our problem  there are exceptions  like non wildcarded globbing - as  ShadowRanger pointed out   so I m not going to insist on them  Not to mention that in some cases  filename processing might be required   Python 3   os access path  mode     dir fd None  effective ids False  follow symlinks True  whose behavior is close to os path exists  actually it s wider  mainly because of the 2nd argument    user permissions might restrict the file  visibility  as the doc states         test if the invoking user has the specified access to path  mode should be F OK to test the existence of path       os access   tmp   os F OK   Since I also work in C  I use this method as well because under the hood  it calls native APIs  again  via    PYTHON SRC DIR  Modules posixmodule c    but it also opens a gate for possible user errors  and it s not as Pythonic as other variants  So  as  AaronHall rightly pointed out  don t use it unless you know what you re doing    Nix   man7   ACCESS 2       pay attention to the note about the security hole its usage might introduce      Win   MS Docs   GetFileAttributesW function   Note  calling native APIs is also possible via  Python 3   ctypes - A foreign function library for Python  but in most cases it s more complicated    Win specific   Since vcruntime   msvcr    dll exports a  MS Docs    access   waccess function family as well  here s an example    Python 3 5 3  v3 5 3 1880cb95a742  Jan 16 2017  16 02 32   MSC v 1900 64 bit  AMD64   on win32 Type  help    copyright    credits  or  license  for more information   gt  gt  gt  import os  ctypes  gt  gt  gt  ctypes CDLL  msvcrt    waccess u C   Windows  System32  cmd exe   os F OK  0  gt  gt  gt  ctypes CDLL  msvcrt    waccess u C   Windows  System32  cmd exe notexist   os F OK  -1    Notes    Although it s not a good practice  I m using os F OK in the call  but that s just for clarity  its value is 0  I m using  waccess so that the same code works on Python3 and Python2  in spite of unicode related differences between them  Although this targets a very specific area  it was not mentioned in any of the previous answers   The Lnx  Ubtu  16 x64   counterpart as well    Python 3 5 2  default  Nov 17 2016  17 05 23   GCC 5 4 0 20160609  on linux Type  help    copyright    credits  or  license  for more information   gt  gt  gt  import os  ctypes  gt  gt  gt  ctypes CDLL   lib x86 64-linux-gnu libc so 6   access b  tmp   os F OK  0  gt  gt  gt  ctypes CDLL   lib x86 64-linux-gnu libc so 6   access b  tmp notexist   os F OK  -1    Notes    Instead hardcoding libc s path    lib x86 64-linux-gnu libc so 6   which may  and most likely  will  vary across systems  None  or the empty string  can be passed to CDLL constructor  ctypes CDLL None  access b  tmp   os F OK    According to  man7   DLOPEN 3       If filename is NULL  then the returned handle is for the main   program   When given to dlsym    this handle causes a search for a   symbol in the main program  followed by all shared objects loaded at   program startup  and then all shared objects loaded by dlopen   with   the flag RTLD GLOBAL     Main  current  program  python  is linked against libc  so its symbols  including access  will be loaded This has to be handled with care  since functions like main  Py Main and  all the  others are available  calling them could have disastrous effects  on the current program  This doesn t also apply to Win  but that s not such a big deal  since msvcrt dll is located in   SystemRoot  System32  which is in  PATH  by default   I wanted to take things further and replicate this behavior on Win  and submit a patch   but as it turns out   MS Docs   GetProcAddress function only  sees  exported symbols  so unless someone declares the functions in the main executable as   declspec dllexport   why on Earth the regular person would do that    the main program is loadable but pretty much unusable   Install some third-party module with filesystem capabilities  Most likely  will rely on one of the ways above  maybe with slight customizations   One example would be  again  Win specific   GitHub   mhammond pywin32 - Python for Windows  pywin32  Extensions  which is a Python wrapper over WINAPIs   But  since this is more like a workaround  I m stopping here  Another  lame  workaround  gainarie  is  as I like to call it   the sysadmin approach  use Python as a wrapper to execute shell commands   Win     py35x64 test  e  Work Dev StackOverflow q000082831 gt  e  Work Dev VEnvs py35x64 test Scripts python exe  -c  import os  print os system  dir  b   C   Windows  System32  cmd exe    gt  nul 2 gt  amp 1     0   py35x64 test  e  Work Dev StackOverflow q000082831 gt  e  Work Dev VEnvs py35x64 test Scripts python exe  -c  import os  print os system  dir  b   C   Windows  System32  cmd exe notexist    gt  nul 2 gt  amp 1     1   Nix  Lnx  Ubtu       cfati cfati-ubtu16x64-0    gt  python3 -c  import os  print os system  ls    tmp    gt   dev null 2 gt  amp 1     0  cfati cfati-ubtu16x64-0    gt  python3 -c  import os  print os system  ls    tmp notexist    gt   dev null 2 gt  amp 1     512      Bottom line    Do use try   except   else   finally blocks  because they can prevent you running into a series of nasty problems  A counter-example that I can think of  is performance  such blocks are costly  so try not to place them in code that it s supposed to run hundreds of thousands times per second  but since  in most cases  it involves disk access  it won t be the case     Final note s     I will try to keep it up to date  any suggestions are welcome  I will incorporate anything useful that will come up into the answer

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If the file is for opening you could use one of the following techniques   with open  somefile    xt   as f   Using the x-flag  Python3 3 and above     f write  Hello n    if not os path exists  somefile         with open  somefile    wt   as f          f write  Hello n   else      print  File already exists        UPDATE  Just to avoid confusion and based on the answers I got  current answer finds either a file or a directory with the given name

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exists   and is file   methods of  Path  object can be used for checking if a given path exists and is a file   Python 3 program to check if a file exists     File name   check-if-file-exists py  from pathlib import Path  filePath   Path input  Enter path of the file to be found       if filePath exists   and filePath is file        print  Success  File exists   else      print  Error  File does not exist     Output        python3 check-if-file-exists py        Enter path of the file to be found   Users macuser1 stack-overflow index html       Success  File exists        python3 check-if-file-exists py        Enter path of the file to be found  hghjg jghj      Error  File does not exist

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import os    for testing purpose args defaulted to current folder  amp  file     returns True if file found def file exists FOLDER PATH        FILE NAME   file         return os path isdir FOLDER PATH            and os path isfile os path join FOLDER PATH  FILE NAME     Basically a folder check  then a file check with proper directory separator using os path join

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You have the os path exists function   import os path os path exists file path    This returns True for both files and directories but you can instead use  os path isfile file path    to test if it s a file specifically  It follows symlinks

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Use os path isfile   with os access     import os  PATH      file txt  if os path isfile PATH  and os access PATH  os R OK       print  File exists and is readable   else      print  Either the file is missing or not readable

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Additionally  os access     if os access  myfile   os R OK       with open  myfile   as fp          return fp read     Being R OK  W OK  and X OK the flags to test for permissions  doc

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How do I check whether a file exists  using Python  without using a try statement    Now available since Python 3 4  import and instantiate a Path object with the file name  and check the is file method  note that this returns True for symlinks pointing to regular files as well     gt  gt  gt  from pathlib import Path  gt  gt  gt  Path      is file   False  gt  gt  gt  Path   initrd img   is file   True  gt  gt  gt  Path   doesnotexist   is file   False   If you re on Python 2  you can backport the pathlib module from pypi  pathlib2  or otherwise check isfile from the os path module    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile      False  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   initrd img   True  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   doesnotexist   False   Now the above is probably the best pragmatic direct answer here  but there s the possibility of a race condition  depending on what you re trying to accomplish   and the fact that the underlying implementation uses a try  but Python uses try everywhere in its implementation    Because Python uses try everywhere  there s really no reason to avoid an implementation that uses it   But the rest of this answer attempts to consider these caveats   Longer  much more pedantic answer  Available since Python 3 4  use the new Path object in pathlib  Note that  exists is not quite right  because directories are not files  except in the unix sense that everything is a file     gt  gt  gt  from pathlib import Path  gt  gt  gt  root   Path       gt  gt  gt  root exists   True   So we need to use is file    gt  gt  gt  root is file   False   Here s the help on is file   is file self      Whether this path is a regular file  also True for symlinks pointing     to regular files     So let s get a file that we know is a file    gt  gt  gt  import tempfile  gt  gt  gt  file   tempfile NamedTemporaryFile    gt  gt  gt  filepathobj   Path file name   gt  gt  gt  filepathobj is file   True  gt  gt  gt  filepathobj exists   True   By default  NamedTemporaryFile deletes the file when closed  and will automatically close when no more references exist to it     gt  gt  gt  del file  gt  gt  gt  filepathobj exists   False  gt  gt  gt  filepathobj is file   False   If you dig into the implementation  though  you ll see that is file uses try   def is file self               Whether this path is a regular file  also True for symlinks pointing     to regular files               try          return S ISREG self stat   st mode      except OSError as e          if e errno not in  ENOENT  ENOTDIR               raise           Path doesn t exist or is a broken symlink            see https   bitbucket org pitrou pathlib issue 12           return False   Race Conditions  Why we like try  We like try because it avoids race conditions  With try  you simply attempt to read your file  expecting it to be there  and if not  you catch the exception and perform whatever fallback behavior makes sense   If you want to check that a file exists before you attempt to read it  and you might be deleting it and then you might be using multiple threads or processes  or another program knows about that file and could delete it - you risk the chance of a race condition if you check it exists  because you are then racing to open it before its condition  its existence  changes    Race conditions are very hard to debug because there s a very small window in which they can cause your program to fail   But if this is your motivation  you can get the value of a try statement by using the suppress context manager   Avoiding race conditions without a try statement  suppress  Python 3 4 gives us the suppress context manager  previously the ignore context manager   which does semantically exactly the same thing in fewer lines  while also  at least superficially  meeting the original ask to avoid a try statement   from contextlib import suppress from pathlib import Path   Usage    gt  gt  gt  with suppress OSError   Path  doesnotexist   open   as f          for line in f              print line        gt  gt  gt   gt  gt  gt  with suppress OSError           Path  doesnotexist   unlink         gt  gt  gt     For earlier Pythons  you could roll your own suppress  but without a try will be more verbose than with  I do believe this actually is the only answer that doesn t use try at any level in the Python that can be applied to prior to Python 3 4 because it uses a context manager instead   class suppress object       def   init   self   exceptions           self exceptions   exceptions     def   enter   self           return self     def   exit   self  exc type  exc value  traceback           if exc type is not None              return issubclass exc type  self exceptions    Perhaps easier with a try   from contextlib import contextmanager   contextmanager def suppress  exceptions       try          yield     except exceptions          pass   Other options that don t meet the ask for  without try    isfile  import os os path isfile path    from the docs      os path isfile path       Return True if path is an existing regular file  This follows symbolic   links  so both islink   and isfile   can be true for the same path    But if you examine the source of this function  you ll see it actually does use a try statement      This follows symbolic links  so both islink   and isdir   can be true   for the same path on systems that support symlinks def isfile path          Test whether a path is a regular file        try          st   os stat path      except os error          return False     return stat S ISREG st st mode      gt  gt  gt  OSError is os error True   All it s doing is using the given path to see if it can get stats on it   catching OSError and then checking if it s a file if it didn t raise the exception   If you intend to do something with the file  I would suggest directly attempting it with a try-except to avoid a race condition   try      with open path  as f          f read   except OSError      pass   os access  Available for Unix and Windows is os access  but to use you must pass flags  and it does not differentiate between files and directories  This is more used to test if the real invoking user has access in an elevated privilege environment   import os os access path  os F OK    It also suffers from the same race condition problems as isfile  From the docs      Note    Using access   to check if a user is authorized to e g  open a file   before actually doing so using open   creates a security hole  because   the user might exploit the short time interval between checking and   opening the file to manipulate it  It   s preferable to use EAFP   techniques  For example   if os access  myfile   os R OK       with open  myfile   as fp          return fp read   return  some default data        is better written as   try      fp   open  myfile   except IOError as e      if e errno    errno EACCES          return  some default data        Not a permission error      raise else      with fp          return fp read      Avoid using os access  It is a low level function that has more opportunities for user error than the higher level objects and functions discussed above   Criticism of another answer   Another answer says this about os access      Personally  I prefer this one because under the hood  it calls native APIs  via    PYTHON SRC DIR  Modules posixmodule c    but it also opens a gate for possible user errors  and it s not as Pythonic as other variants    This answer says it prefers a non-Pythonic  error-prone method  with no justification  It seems to encourage users to use low-level APIs without understanding them    It also creates a context manager which  by unconditionally returning True  allows all Exceptions  including KeyboardInterrupt and SystemExit   to pass silently  which is a good way to hide bugs   This seems to encourage users to adopt poor practices

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You have the os path exists function   import os path os path exists file path    This returns True for both files and directories but you can instead use  os path isfile file path    to test if it s a file specifically  It follows symlinks

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Unlike isfile    exists   will return True for directories  So depending on if you want only plain files or also directories  you ll use isfile   or exists    Here is some simple REPL output    gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   etc password txt   True  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   etc   False  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   does not exist   False  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   etc password txt   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   etc   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   does not exist   False

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If the file is for opening you could use one of the following techniques   with open  somefile    xt   as f   Using the x-flag  Python3 3 and above     f write  Hello n    if not os path exists  somefile         with open  somefile    wt   as f          f write  Hello n   else      print  File already exists        UPDATE  Just to avoid confusion and based on the answers I got  current answer finds either a file or a directory with the given name

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You have the os path exists function   import os path os path exists file path    This returns True for both files and directories but you can instead use  os path isfile file path    to test if it s a file specifically  It follows symlinks

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You can use the  OS  library of Python    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os path exists  C   Users        Desktop  test txt    True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists  C   Users        Desktop  test tx   False

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import os os path exists path    Returns whether the path  directory or file  exists or not os path isfile path    Returns whether the file exists or not

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You can write Brian s suggestion without the try    from contextlib import suppress  with suppress IOError   open  filename        process     suppress is part of Python 3 4  In older releases you can quickly write your own suppress   from contextlib import contextmanager   contextmanager def suppress  exceptions       try          yield     except exceptions          pass

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You should definitely use this one  from os path import exists  if exists  quot file quot      True      print  quot File exists  quot  elif exists  quot file quot      False      print  quot File doesn t exist  quot

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Testing for files and folders with os path isfile    os path isdir   and os path exists    Assuming that the  path  is a valid path  this table shows what is returned by each function for files and folders     You can also test if a file is a certain type of file using os path splitext   to get the extension  if you don t already know it    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  path    path to a word document   gt  gt  gt  os path isfile path  True  gt  gt  gt  os path splitext path  1       docx    test if the extension is  docx True

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It isn t needed probably but if it is  here s some code  import os  def file exists path  filename       for file or folder in os listdir path           if file or folder    filename              return True     return False

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import os path  def isReadableFile file path  file name       full path   file path         file name     try          if not os path exists file path               print  File path is invalid               return False         elif not os path isfile full path               print  File does not exist               return False         elif not os access full path  os R OK               print  File cannot be read               return False         else              print  File can be read               return True     except IOError as ex          print  I O error  0     1   format ex errno  ex strerror      except Error as ex          print  Error  0     1   format ex errno  ex strerror      return False  ------------------------------------------------------  path     usr khaled documents puzzles  fileName    puzzle 1 txt   isReadableFile path  fileName

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How do I check whether a file exists  without using the try statement    In 2016  this is still arguably the easiest way to check if both a file exists and if it is a file   import os os path isfile    file txt        Returns True if exists  else False   isfile is actually just a helper method that internally uses os stat and stat S ISREG mode  underneath  This os stat is a lower-level method that will provide you with detailed information about files  directories  sockets  buffers  and more  More about os stat here  Note  However  this approach will not lock the file in any way and therefore your code can become vulnerable to  time of check to time of use   TOCTTOU  bugs   So raising exceptions is considered to be an acceptable  and Pythonic  approach for flow control in your program  And one should consider handling missing files with IOErrors  rather than if statements  just an advice

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If the reason you re checking is so you can do something like if file exists  open it    it s safer to use a try around the attempt to open it  Checking and then opening risks the file being deleted or moved or something between when you check and when you try to open it   If you re not planning to open the file immediately  you can use os path isfile     Return True if path is an existing regular file  This follows symbolic links  so both islink   and isfile   can be true for the same path    import os path os path isfile fname     if you need to be sure it s a file   Starting with Python 3 4  the pathlib module offers an object-oriented approach  backported to pathlib2 in Python 2 7    from pathlib import Path  my file   Path   path to file   if my file is file          file exists   To check a directory  do   if my file is dir          directory exists   To check whether a Path object exists independently of whether is it a file or directory  use exists     if my file exists          path exists   You can also use resolve strict True  in a try block   try      my abs path   my file resolve strict True  except FileNotFoundError        doesn t exist else        exists

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You should definitely use this one  from os path import exists  if exists  quot file quot      True      print  quot File exists  quot  elif exists  quot file quot      False      print  quot File doesn t exist  quot

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To check if a file exists    from sys import argv  from os path import exists script  filename   argv target   open filename  print  file exists   r    exists filename

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Additionally  os access     if os access  myfile   os R OK       with open  myfile   as fp          return fp read     Being R OK  W OK  and X OK the flags to test for permissions  doc

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Although I always recommend using try and except statements  here are a few possibilities for you  my personal favourite is using os access     Try opening the file   Opening the file will always verify the existence of the file  You can make a function just like so   def File Existence filepath       f   open filepath      return True   If it s False  it will stop execution with an unhanded IOError or OSError in later versions of Python  To catch the exception  you have to use a try except clause  Of course  you can always use a try except  statement like so  thanks to hsandt for making me think    def File Existence filepath       try          f   open filepath      except IOError  OSError    Note OSError is for later versions of Python         return False      return True  Use os path exists path    This will check the existence of what you specify  However  it checks for files and directories so beware about how you use it   import os path  gt  gt  gt  os path exists  this is a directory   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists  this is a file txt   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists  not a directory   False  Use os access path  mode    This will check whether you have access to the file  It will check for permissions  Based on the os py documentation  typing in os F OK  it will check the existence of the path  However  using this will create a security hole  as someone can attack your file using the time between checking the permissions and opening the file  You should instead go directly to opening the file instead of checking its permissions   EAFP vs LBYP   If you re not going to open the file afterwards  and only checking its existence  then you can use this   Anyway  here    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os access   is a file txt   os F OK  True    I should also mention that there are two ways that you will not be able to verify the existence of a file  Either the issue will be permission denied or no such file or directory  If you catch an IOError  set the IOError as e  like my first option   and then type in print e args  so that you can hopefully determine your issue  I hope it helps

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Use os path isfile   with os access     import os  PATH      file txt  if os path isfile PATH  and os access PATH  os R OK       print  File exists and is readable   else      print  Either the file is missing or not readable

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This is the simplest way to check if a file exists  Just because the file existed when you checked doesn t guarantee that it will be there when you need to open it   import os fname    foo txt  if os path isfile fname       print  file does exist at this time   else      print  no such file exists at this time

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If the reason you re checking is so you can do something like if file exists  open it    it s safer to use a try around the attempt to open it  Checking and then opening risks the file being deleted or moved or something between when you check and when you try to open it   If you re not planning to open the file immediately  you can use os path isfile     Return True if path is an existing regular file  This follows symbolic links  so both islink   and isfile   can be true for the same path    import os path os path isfile fname     if you need to be sure it s a file   Starting with Python 3 4  the pathlib module offers an object-oriented approach  backported to pathlib2 in Python 2 7    from pathlib import Path  my file   Path   path to file   if my file is file          file exists   To check a directory  do   if my file is dir          directory exists   To check whether a Path object exists independently of whether is it a file or directory  use exists     if my file exists          path exists   You can also use resolve strict True  in a try block   try      my abs path   my file resolve strict True  except FileNotFoundError        doesn t exist else        exists

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import os path  def isReadableFile file path  file name       full path   file path         file name     try          if not os path exists file path               print  File path is invalid               return False         elif not os path isfile full path               print  File does not exist               return False         elif not os access full path  os R OK               print  File cannot be read               return False         else              print  File can be read               return True     except IOError as ex          print  I O error  0     1   format ex errno  ex strerror      except Error as ex          print  Error  0     1   format ex errno  ex strerror      return False  ------------------------------------------------------  path     usr khaled documents puzzles  fileName    puzzle 1 txt   isReadableFile path  fileName

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Additionally  os access     if os access  myfile   os R OK       with open  myfile   as fp          return fp read     Being R OK  W OK  and X OK the flags to test for permissions  doc

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Here s a 1 line Python command for the Linux command line environment  I find this VERY HANDY since I m not such a hot Bash guy   python -c  import os path  print os path isfile   path to file xxx      I hope this is helpful

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If you imported NumPy already for other purposes then there is no need to import other libraries like pathlib  os  paths  etc   import numpy as np np DataSource   exists  path to your file     This will return true or false based on its existence

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exists   and is file   methods of  Path  object can be used for checking if a given path exists and is a file   Python 3 program to check if a file exists     File name   check-if-file-exists py  from pathlib import Path  filePath   Path input  Enter path of the file to be found       if filePath exists   and filePath is file        print  Success  File exists   else      print  Error  File does not exist     Output        python3 check-if-file-exists py        Enter path of the file to be found   Users macuser1 stack-overflow index html       Success  File exists        python3 check-if-file-exists py        Enter path of the file to be found  hghjg jghj      Error  File does not exist

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TL DR To quickly check the existence of a file or a folder  use the Path module  Here is a single line code  after import   from pathlib import Path if Path  quot myfile txt quot   exists      works for both file and folders       do stuffs     The pathlib module was introduced in Python 3 4  so you need to have Python 3 4   this lib makes your life much easier and it is pretty to use  here is more doc about it  https   docs python org 3 library pathlib html   BTW  if you are going to reuse the path  then it is better to assign it to a variable so will become from pathlib import Path p   Path  quot loc of myfile txt quot   if p exists      works for both file and folders       do stuffs

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Adding one more slight variation which isn t exactly reflected in the other answers   This will handle the case of the file path being None or empty string     def file exists file path       if not file path          return False     elif not os path isfile file path           return False     else          return True   Adding a variant based on suggestion from Shahbaz   def file exists file path       if not file path          return False     else          return os path isfile file path    Adding a variant based on suggestion from Peter Wood   def file exists file path       return file path and os path isfile file path

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import os path    path to dir  root dirs files   os walk path  next   if myfile in files     print  yes it exists    This is helpful when checking for several files  Or you want to do a set intersection  subtraction with an existing list

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import os path  def isReadableFile file path  file name       full path   file path         file name     try          if not os path exists file path               print  File path is invalid               return False         elif not os path isfile full path               print  File does not exist               return False         elif not os access full path  os R OK               print  File cannot be read               return False         else              print  File can be read               return True     except IOError as ex          print  I O error  0     1   format ex errno  ex strerror      except Error as ex          print  Error  0     1   format ex errno  ex strerror      return False  ------------------------------------------------------  path     usr khaled documents puzzles  fileName    puzzle 1 txt   isReadableFile path  fileName

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In 2016 the best way is still using os path isfile    gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   path to some file txt     Or in Python 3 you can use pathlib   import pathlib path   pathlib Path   path to some file txt   if path is file

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It doesn t seem like there s a meaningful functional difference between try except and isfile    so you should use which one makes sense   If you want to read a file  if it exists  do  try      f   open filepath  except IOError      print  Oh dear     But if you just wanted to rename a file if it exists  and therefore don t need to open it  do  if os path isfile filepath       os rename filepath  filepath     old     If you want to write to a file  if it doesn t exist  do    python 2 if not os path isfile filepath       f   open filepath   w      python 3  x opens for exclusive creation  failing if the file already exists try      f   open filepath   wx   except IOError      print  file already exists    If you need file locking  that s a different matter

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use os path exists   to get file exist or not   path     home ie SachinSaga scripts subscription unit reader file   def file check at location filename       return os path exists path   str filename  replace            file name  dummy txt  responce   file check at location file name   if responce     print  file found at location   else     print  file not found at location

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exists   and is file   methods of  Path  object can be used for checking if a given path exists and is a file   Python 3 program to check if a file exists     File name   check-if-file-exists py  from pathlib import Path  filePath   Path input  Enter path of the file to be found       if filePath exists   and filePath is file        print  Success  File exists   else      print  Error  File does not exist     Output        python3 check-if-file-exists py        Enter path of the file to be found   Users macuser1 stack-overflow index html       Success  File exists        python3 check-if-file-exists py        Enter path of the file to be found  hghjg jghj      Error  File does not exist

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Prefer the try statement  It s considered better style and avoids race conditions   Don t take my word for it  There s plenty of support for this theory  Here s a couple    Style  Section  Handling unusual conditions  of http   allendowney com sd notes notes11 txt Avoiding Race Conditions

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To check if a file exists    from sys import argv  from os path import exists script  filename   argv target   open filename  print  file exists   r    exists filename

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Date 2017-12-04  Every possible solution has been listed in other answers   An intuitive and arguable way to check if a file exists is the following   import os os path isfile    file md      Returns True if exists  else False   additionaly check a dir os path isdir    folder      Returns True if the folder exists  else False   check either a dir or a file os path exists    file     I made an exhaustive cheatsheet for your reference    os path methods in exhaustive cheatsheet   definition     dirname                   basename                   abspath                   relpath                   commonpath                   normpath                   realpath     operation     split    splitdrive    splitext                   join    normcase     compare     samefile    sameopenfile    samestat     condition     isdir                  isfile                  exists                  lexists                 islink                  isabs                  ismount       expand     expanduser                expandvars      stat     getatime    getctime    getmtime              getsize

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Date 2017-12-04  Every possible solution has been listed in other answers   An intuitive and arguable way to check if a file exists is the following   import os os path isfile    file md      Returns True if exists  else False   additionaly check a dir os path isdir    folder      Returns True if the folder exists  else False   check either a dir or a file os path exists    file     I made an exhaustive cheatsheet for your reference    os path methods in exhaustive cheatsheet   definition     dirname                   basename                   abspath                   relpath                   commonpath                   normpath                   realpath     operation     split    splitdrive    splitext                   join    normcase     compare     samefile    sameopenfile    samestat     condition     isdir                  isfile                  exists                  lexists                 islink                  isabs                  ismount       expand     expanduser                expandvars      stat     getatime    getctime    getmtime              getsize

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If the file is for opening you could use one of the following techniques   with open  somefile    xt   as f   Using the x-flag  Python3 3 and above     f write  Hello n    if not os path exists  somefile         with open  somefile    wt   as f          f write  Hello n   else      print  File already exists        UPDATE  Just to avoid confusion and based on the answers I got  current answer finds either a file or a directory with the given name

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Use the following code  def findfile self  filepath    flag   false   for filename in os listdir filepath      if filename     quot your file name quot        flag   true       break     else        print  quot no file found quot     if flag    true      return true   else      return false

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import os os path exists path    Returns whether the path  directory or file  exists or not os path isfile path    Returns whether the file exists or not

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To check if a file exists    from sys import argv  from os path import exists script  filename   argv target   open filename  print  file exists   r    exists filename

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How do I check whether a file exists  using Python  without using a try statement    Now available since Python 3 4  import and instantiate a Path object with the file name  and check the is file method  note that this returns True for symlinks pointing to regular files as well     gt  gt  gt  from pathlib import Path  gt  gt  gt  Path      is file   False  gt  gt  gt  Path   initrd img   is file   True  gt  gt  gt  Path   doesnotexist   is file   False   If you re on Python 2  you can backport the pathlib module from pypi  pathlib2  or otherwise check isfile from the os path module    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile      False  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   initrd img   True  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   doesnotexist   False   Now the above is probably the best pragmatic direct answer here  but there s the possibility of a race condition  depending on what you re trying to accomplish   and the fact that the underlying implementation uses a try  but Python uses try everywhere in its implementation    Because Python uses try everywhere  there s really no reason to avoid an implementation that uses it   But the rest of this answer attempts to consider these caveats   Longer  much more pedantic answer  Available since Python 3 4  use the new Path object in pathlib  Note that  exists is not quite right  because directories are not files  except in the unix sense that everything is a file     gt  gt  gt  from pathlib import Path  gt  gt  gt  root   Path       gt  gt  gt  root exists   True   So we need to use is file    gt  gt  gt  root is file   False   Here s the help on is file   is file self      Whether this path is a regular file  also True for symlinks pointing     to regular files     So let s get a file that we know is a file    gt  gt  gt  import tempfile  gt  gt  gt  file   tempfile NamedTemporaryFile    gt  gt  gt  filepathobj   Path file name   gt  gt  gt  filepathobj is file   True  gt  gt  gt  filepathobj exists   True   By default  NamedTemporaryFile deletes the file when closed  and will automatically close when no more references exist to it     gt  gt  gt  del file  gt  gt  gt  filepathobj exists   False  gt  gt  gt  filepathobj is file   False   If you dig into the implementation  though  you ll see that is file uses try   def is file self               Whether this path is a regular file  also True for symlinks pointing     to regular files               try          return S ISREG self stat   st mode      except OSError as e          if e errno not in  ENOENT  ENOTDIR               raise           Path doesn t exist or is a broken symlink            see https   bitbucket org pitrou pathlib issue 12           return False   Race Conditions  Why we like try  We like try because it avoids race conditions  With try  you simply attempt to read your file  expecting it to be there  and if not  you catch the exception and perform whatever fallback behavior makes sense   If you want to check that a file exists before you attempt to read it  and you might be deleting it and then you might be using multiple threads or processes  or another program knows about that file and could delete it - you risk the chance of a race condition if you check it exists  because you are then racing to open it before its condition  its existence  changes    Race conditions are very hard to debug because there s a very small window in which they can cause your program to fail   But if this is your motivation  you can get the value of a try statement by using the suppress context manager   Avoiding race conditions without a try statement  suppress  Python 3 4 gives us the suppress context manager  previously the ignore context manager   which does semantically exactly the same thing in fewer lines  while also  at least superficially  meeting the original ask to avoid a try statement   from contextlib import suppress from pathlib import Path   Usage    gt  gt  gt  with suppress OSError   Path  doesnotexist   open   as f          for line in f              print line        gt  gt  gt   gt  gt  gt  with suppress OSError           Path  doesnotexist   unlink         gt  gt  gt     For earlier Pythons  you could roll your own suppress  but without a try will be more verbose than with  I do believe this actually is the only answer that doesn t use try at any level in the Python that can be applied to prior to Python 3 4 because it uses a context manager instead   class suppress object       def   init   self   exceptions           self exceptions   exceptions     def   enter   self           return self     def   exit   self  exc type  exc value  traceback           if exc type is not None              return issubclass exc type  self exceptions    Perhaps easier with a try   from contextlib import contextmanager   contextmanager def suppress  exceptions       try          yield     except exceptions          pass   Other options that don t meet the ask for  without try    isfile  import os os path isfile path    from the docs      os path isfile path       Return True if path is an existing regular file  This follows symbolic   links  so both islink   and isfile   can be true for the same path    But if you examine the source of this function  you ll see it actually does use a try statement      This follows symbolic links  so both islink   and isdir   can be true   for the same path on systems that support symlinks def isfile path          Test whether a path is a regular file        try          st   os stat path      except os error          return False     return stat S ISREG st st mode      gt  gt  gt  OSError is os error True   All it s doing is using the given path to see if it can get stats on it   catching OSError and then checking if it s a file if it didn t raise the exception   If you intend to do something with the file  I would suggest directly attempting it with a try-except to avoid a race condition   try      with open path  as f          f read   except OSError      pass   os access  Available for Unix and Windows is os access  but to use you must pass flags  and it does not differentiate between files and directories  This is more used to test if the real invoking user has access in an elevated privilege environment   import os os access path  os F OK    It also suffers from the same race condition problems as isfile  From the docs      Note    Using access   to check if a user is authorized to e g  open a file   before actually doing so using open   creates a security hole  because   the user might exploit the short time interval between checking and   opening the file to manipulate it  It   s preferable to use EAFP   techniques  For example   if os access  myfile   os R OK       with open  myfile   as fp          return fp read   return  some default data        is better written as   try      fp   open  myfile   except IOError as e      if e errno    errno EACCES          return  some default data        Not a permission error      raise else      with fp          return fp read      Avoid using os access  It is a low level function that has more opportunities for user error than the higher level objects and functions discussed above   Criticism of another answer   Another answer says this about os access      Personally  I prefer this one because under the hood  it calls native APIs  via    PYTHON SRC DIR  Modules posixmodule c    but it also opens a gate for possible user errors  and it s not as Pythonic as other variants    This answer says it prefers a non-Pythonic  error-prone method  with no justification  It seems to encourage users to use low-level APIs without understanding them    It also creates a context manager which  by unconditionally returning True  allows all Exceptions  including KeyboardInterrupt and SystemExit   to pass silently  which is a good way to hide bugs   This seems to encourage users to adopt poor practices

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If the file is for opening you could use one of the following techniques   with open  somefile    xt   as f   Using the x-flag  Python3 3 and above     f write  Hello n    if not os path exists  somefile         with open  somefile    wt   as f          f write  Hello n   else      print  File already exists        UPDATE  Just to avoid confusion and based on the answers I got  current answer finds either a file or a directory with the given name

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import os path  if os path isfile filepath      print  quot File exists quot

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Check file or directory exists  You can follow these three ways      Note1  The os path isfile used only for files   import os path os path isfile filename    True if file exists os path isfile dirname    False if directory exists      Note2  The os path exists used for both files and directories   import os path os path exists filename    True if file exists os path exists dirname   True if directory exists      The pathlib Path method  included in Python 3   installable with pip for Python 2    from pathlib import Path Path filename  exists

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Check file or directory exists  You can follow these three ways      Note1  The os path isfile used only for files   import os path os path isfile filename    True if file exists os path isfile dirname    False if directory exists      Note2  The os path exists used for both files and directories   import os path os path exists filename    True if file exists os path exists dirname   True if directory exists      The pathlib Path method  included in Python 3   installable with pip for Python 2    from pathlib import Path Path filename  exists

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import os path  if os path isfile filepath      print  quot File exists quot

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import os path  if os path isfile filepath      print  quot File exists quot

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Unlike isfile    exists   will return True for directories  So depending on if you want only plain files or also directories  you ll use isfile   or exists    Here is some simple REPL output    gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   etc password txt   True  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   etc   False  gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   does not exist   False  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   etc password txt   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   etc   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists   does not exist   False

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use os path exists   to get file exist or not   path     home ie SachinSaga scripts subscription unit reader file   def file check at location filename       return os path exists path   str filename  replace            file name  dummy txt  responce   file check at location file name   if responce     print  file found at location   else     print  file not found at location

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If you imported NumPy already for other purposes then there is no need to import other libraries like pathlib  os  paths  etc   import numpy as np np DataSource   exists  path to your file     This will return true or false based on its existence

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Here s a 1 line Python command for the Linux command line environment  I find this VERY HANDY since I m not such a hot Bash guy   python -c  import os path  print os path isfile   path to file xxx      I hope this is helpful

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To check if a file exists    from sys import argv  from os path import exists script  filename   argv target   open filename  print  file exists   r    exists filename

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Python 3 4  has an object-oriented path module  pathlib   Using this new module  you can check whether a file exists like this  import pathlib p   pathlib Path  path to file   if p is file       or p is dir   to see if it is a directory       do stuff  You can  and usually should  still use a try except block when opening files  try      with p open   as f            do awesome stuff except OSError      print  Well darn     The pathlib module has lots of cool stuff in it  convenient globbing  checking file s owner  easier path joining  etc   It s worth checking out   If you re on an older Python  version 2 6 or later   you can still install pathlib with pip    installs pathlib2 on older Python versions   the original third-party module  pathlib  is no longer maintained  pip install pathlib2  Then import it as follows    Older Python versions import pathlib2 as pathlib

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It isn t needed probably but if it is  here s some code  import os  def file exists path  filename       for file or folder in os listdir path           if file or folder    filename              return True     return False

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TL DR To quickly check the existence of a file or a folder  use the Path module  Here is a single line code  after import   from pathlib import Path if Path  quot myfile txt quot   exists      works for both file and folders       do stuffs     The pathlib module was introduced in Python 3 4  so you need to have Python 3 4   this lib makes your life much easier and it is pretty to use  here is more doc about it  https   docs python org 3 library pathlib html   BTW  if you are going to reuse the path  then it is better to assign it to a variable so will become from pathlib import Path p   Path  quot loc of myfile txt quot   if p exists      works for both file and folders       do stuffs

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If the reason you re checking is so you can do something like if file exists  open it    it s safer to use a try around the attempt to open it  Checking and then opening risks the file being deleted or moved or something between when you check and when you try to open it   If you re not planning to open the file immediately  you can use os path isfile     Return True if path is an existing regular file  This follows symbolic links  so both islink   and isfile   can be true for the same path    import os path os path isfile fname     if you need to be sure it s a file   Starting with Python 3 4  the pathlib module offers an object-oriented approach  backported to pathlib2 in Python 2 7    from pathlib import Path  my file   Path   path to file   if my file is file          file exists   To check a directory  do   if my file is dir          directory exists   To check whether a Path object exists independently of whether is it a file or directory  use exists     if my file exists          path exists   You can also use resolve strict True  in a try block   try      my abs path   my file resolve strict True  except FileNotFoundError        doesn t exist else        exists

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It doesn t seem like there s a meaningful functional difference between try except and isfile    so you should use which one makes sense   If you want to read a file  if it exists  do  try      f   open filepath  except IOError      print  Oh dear     But if you just wanted to rename a file if it exists  and therefore don t need to open it  do  if os path isfile filepath       os rename filepath  filepath     old     If you want to write to a file  if it doesn t exist  do    python 2 if not os path isfile filepath       f   open filepath   w      python 3  x opens for exclusive creation  failing if the file already exists try      f   open filepath   wx   except IOError      print  file already exists    If you need file locking  that s a different matter

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Use the following code  def findfile self  filepath    flag   false   for filename in os listdir filepath      if filename     quot your file name quot        flag   true       break     else        print  quot no file found quot     if flag    true      return true   else      return false

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You can write Brian s suggestion without the try    from contextlib import suppress  with suppress IOError   open  filename        process     suppress is part of Python 3 4  In older releases you can quickly write your own suppress   from contextlib import contextmanager   contextmanager def suppress  exceptions       try          yield     except exceptions          pass

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You have the os path exists function   import os path os path exists file path    This returns True for both files and directories but you can instead use  os path isfile file path    to test if it s a file specifically  It follows symlinks

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It doesn t seem like there s a meaningful functional difference between try except and isfile    so you should use which one makes sense   If you want to read a file  if it exists  do  try      f   open filepath  except IOError      print  Oh dear     But if you just wanted to rename a file if it exists  and therefore don t need to open it  do  if os path isfile filepath       os rename filepath  filepath     old     If you want to write to a file  if it doesn t exist  do    python 2 if not os path isfile filepath       f   open filepath   w      python 3  x opens for exclusive creation  failing if the file already exists try      f   open filepath   wx   except IOError      print  file already exists    If you need file locking  that s a different matter

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If the reason you re checking is so you can do something like if file exists  open it    it s safer to use a try around the attempt to open it  Checking and then opening risks the file being deleted or moved or something between when you check and when you try to open it   If you re not planning to open the file immediately  you can use os path isfile     Return True if path is an existing regular file  This follows symbolic links  so both islink   and isfile   can be true for the same path    import os path os path isfile fname     if you need to be sure it s a file   Starting with Python 3 4  the pathlib module offers an object-oriented approach  backported to pathlib2 in Python 2 7    from pathlib import Path  my file   Path   path to file   if my file is file          file exists   To check a directory  do   if my file is dir          directory exists   To check whether a Path object exists independently of whether is it a file or directory  use exists     if my file exists          path exists   You can also use resolve strict True  in a try block   try      my abs path   my file resolve strict True  except FileNotFoundError        doesn t exist else        exists

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import os os path exists path    Returns whether the path  directory or file  exists or not os path isfile path    Returns whether the file exists or not

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You could try this  safer    try        http   effbot org zone python-with-statement htm        with  is safer to open a file     with open  whatever txt   as fh            Do something with  fh  except IOError as e      print        format e     The ouput would be        Errno 2  No such file or directory     whatever txt     Then  depending on the result  your program can just keep running from there or you can code to stop it if you want

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Check file or directory exists  You can follow these three ways      Note1  The os path isfile used only for files   import os path os path isfile filename    True if file exists os path isfile dirname    False if directory exists      Note2  The os path exists used for both files and directories   import os path os path exists filename    True if file exists os path exists dirname   True if directory exists      The pathlib Path method  included in Python 3   installable with pip for Python 2    from pathlib import Path Path filename  exists

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import os path    path to dir  root dirs files   os walk path  next   if myfile in files     print  yes it exists    This is helpful when checking for several files  Or you want to do a set intersection  subtraction with an existing list

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You can use os listdir to check if a file is in a certain directory   import os if  file ext  in os listdir  dirpath         code

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Although almost every possible way has been listed in  at least one of  the existing answers  e g  Python 3 4 specific stuff was added   I ll try to group everything together   Note  every piece of Python standard library code that I m going to post  belongs to version 3 5 3   Problem statement    Check file  arguable  also folder   special  file     existence Don t use try   except   else   finally blocks   Possible solutions       Python 3   os path exists path   also check other function family members like os path isfile  os path isdir  os path lexists for slightly different behaviors   os path exists path       Return True if path refers to an existing path or an open file descriptor  Returns False for broken symbolic links  On some platforms  this function may return False if permission is not granted to execute os stat   on the requested file  even if the path physically exists    All good  but if following the import tree    os path - posixpath py  ntpath py    genericpath py  line   20   def exists path          Test whether a path exists   Returns False for broken symbolic links        try          st   os stat path      except os error          return False     return True     it s just a try   except block around  Python 3   os stat path     dir fd None  follow symlinks True   So  your code is try   except free  but lower in the framestack there s  at least  one such block  This also applies to other funcs  including os path isfile    1 1   Python 3   Path is file     It s a fancier  and more pythonic  way of handling paths  but Under the hood  it does exactly the same thing  pathlib py  line   1330    def is file self               Whether this path is a regular file  also True for symlinks pointing     to regular files               try          return S ISREG self stat   st mode      except OSError as e          if e errno not in  ENOENT  ENOTDIR               raise           Path doesn t exist or is a broken symlink            see https   bitbucket org pitrou pathlib issue 12           return False    Python 3   With Statement Context Managers  Either    Create one   class Swallow     Dummy example     swallowed exceptions    FileNotFoundError        def   enter   self           print  Entering           def   exit   self  exc type  exc value  exc traceback           print  Exiting    exc type  exc value  exc traceback          return exc type in Swallow swallowed exceptions    only swallow FileNotFoundError  not e g  TypeError - if the user passes a wrong argument like None or float or         And its usage - I ll replicate the os path isfile behavior  note that this is just for demonstrating purposes  do not attempt to write such code for production    import os import stat   def isfile seaman path      Dummy func     result   False     with Swallow            result   stat S ISREG os stat path  st mode      return result   Use  Python 3   contextlib suppress  exceptions  - which was specifically designed for selectively suppressing exceptions   But  they seem to be wrappers over try   except   else   finally blocks  as  Python 3   The with statement states      This allows common try   except   finally usage patterns to be encapsulated for convenient reuse   Filesystem traversal functions  and search the results for matching item s      Python 3   os listdir path       or  Python 3   os scandir path      on Python v3 5   backport   PyPI   scandir    Under the hood  both use    Nix   man7   OPENDIR 3     man7   READDIR 3     man7   CLOSEDIR 3  Win   MS Docs   FindFirstFileW function    MS Docs   FindNextFileW function    MS Docs   FindClose function   via  GitHub   python cpython -  master  cpython Modules posixmodule c      Using scandir   instead of listdir   can significantly increase the performance of code that also needs file type or file attribute information  because os DirEntry objects expose this information if the operating system provides it when scanning a directory  All os DirEntry methods may perform a system call  but is dir   and is file   usually only require a system call for symbolic links  os DirEntry stat   always requires a system call on Unix but only requires one for symbolic links on Windows    Python 3   os walk top  topdown True  onerror None  followlinks False    It uses os listdir  os scandir when available    Python 3   glob iglob pathname     recursive False   or its predecessor  glob glob    Doesn t seem a traversing function per se  at least in some cases   but it still uses os listdir    Since these iterate over folders   in most of the cases  they are inefficient for our problem  there are exceptions  like non wildcarded globbing - as  ShadowRanger pointed out   so I m not going to insist on them  Not to mention that in some cases  filename processing might be required   Python 3   os access path  mode     dir fd None  effective ids False  follow symlinks True  whose behavior is close to os path exists  actually it s wider  mainly because of the 2nd argument    user permissions might restrict the file  visibility  as the doc states         test if the invoking user has the specified access to path  mode should be F OK to test the existence of path       os access   tmp   os F OK   Since I also work in C  I use this method as well because under the hood  it calls native APIs  again  via    PYTHON SRC DIR  Modules posixmodule c    but it also opens a gate for possible user errors  and it s not as Pythonic as other variants  So  as  AaronHall rightly pointed out  don t use it unless you know what you re doing    Nix   man7   ACCESS 2       pay attention to the note about the security hole its usage might introduce      Win   MS Docs   GetFileAttributesW function   Note  calling native APIs is also possible via  Python 3   ctypes - A foreign function library for Python  but in most cases it s more complicated    Win specific   Since vcruntime   msvcr    dll exports a  MS Docs    access   waccess function family as well  here s an example    Python 3 5 3  v3 5 3 1880cb95a742  Jan 16 2017  16 02 32   MSC v 1900 64 bit  AMD64   on win32 Type  help    copyright    credits  or  license  for more information   gt  gt  gt  import os  ctypes  gt  gt  gt  ctypes CDLL  msvcrt    waccess u C   Windows  System32  cmd exe   os F OK  0  gt  gt  gt  ctypes CDLL  msvcrt    waccess u C   Windows  System32  cmd exe notexist   os F OK  -1    Notes    Although it s not a good practice  I m using os F OK in the call  but that s just for clarity  its value is 0  I m using  waccess so that the same code works on Python3 and Python2  in spite of unicode related differences between them  Although this targets a very specific area  it was not mentioned in any of the previous answers   The Lnx  Ubtu  16 x64   counterpart as well    Python 3 5 2  default  Nov 17 2016  17 05 23   GCC 5 4 0 20160609  on linux Type  help    copyright    credits  or  license  for more information   gt  gt  gt  import os  ctypes  gt  gt  gt  ctypes CDLL   lib x86 64-linux-gnu libc so 6   access b  tmp   os F OK  0  gt  gt  gt  ctypes CDLL   lib x86 64-linux-gnu libc so 6   access b  tmp notexist   os F OK  -1    Notes    Instead hardcoding libc s path    lib x86 64-linux-gnu libc so 6   which may  and most likely  will  vary across systems  None  or the empty string  can be passed to CDLL constructor  ctypes CDLL None  access b  tmp   os F OK    According to  man7   DLOPEN 3       If filename is NULL  then the returned handle is for the main   program   When given to dlsym    this handle causes a search for a   symbol in the main program  followed by all shared objects loaded at   program startup  and then all shared objects loaded by dlopen   with   the flag RTLD GLOBAL     Main  current  program  python  is linked against libc  so its symbols  including access  will be loaded This has to be handled with care  since functions like main  Py Main and  all the  others are available  calling them could have disastrous effects  on the current program  This doesn t also apply to Win  but that s not such a big deal  since msvcrt dll is located in   SystemRoot  System32  which is in  PATH  by default   I wanted to take things further and replicate this behavior on Win  and submit a patch   but as it turns out   MS Docs   GetProcAddress function only  sees  exported symbols  so unless someone declares the functions in the main executable as   declspec dllexport   why on Earth the regular person would do that    the main program is loadable but pretty much unusable   Install some third-party module with filesystem capabilities  Most likely  will rely on one of the ways above  maybe with slight customizations   One example would be  again  Win specific   GitHub   mhammond pywin32 - Python for Windows  pywin32  Extensions  which is a Python wrapper over WINAPIs   But  since this is more like a workaround  I m stopping here  Another  lame  workaround  gainarie  is  as I like to call it   the sysadmin approach  use Python as a wrapper to execute shell commands   Win     py35x64 test  e  Work Dev StackOverflow q000082831 gt  e  Work Dev VEnvs py35x64 test Scripts python exe  -c  import os  print os system  dir  b   C   Windows  System32  cmd exe    gt  nul 2 gt  amp 1     0   py35x64 test  e  Work Dev StackOverflow q000082831 gt  e  Work Dev VEnvs py35x64 test Scripts python exe  -c  import os  print os system  dir  b   C   Windows  System32  cmd exe notexist    gt  nul 2 gt  amp 1     1   Nix  Lnx  Ubtu       cfati cfati-ubtu16x64-0    gt  python3 -c  import os  print os system  ls    tmp    gt   dev null 2 gt  amp 1     0  cfati cfati-ubtu16x64-0    gt  python3 -c  import os  print os system  ls    tmp notexist    gt   dev null 2 gt  amp 1     512      Bottom line    Do use try   except   else   finally blocks  because they can prevent you running into a series of nasty problems  A counter-example that I can think of  is performance  such blocks are costly  so try not to place them in code that it s supposed to run hundreds of thousands times per second  but since  in most cases  it involves disk access  it won t be the case     Final note s     I will try to keep it up to date  any suggestions are welcome  I will incorporate anything useful that will come up into the answer

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Testing for files and folders with os path isfile    os path isdir   and os path exists    Assuming that the  path  is a valid path  this table shows what is returned by each function for files and folders     You can also test if a file is a certain type of file using os path splitext   to get the extension  if you don t already know it    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  path    path to a word document   gt  gt  gt  os path isfile path  True  gt  gt  gt  os path splitext path  1       docx    test if the extension is  docx True

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Use os path isfile   with os access     import os  PATH      file txt  if os path isfile PATH  and os access PATH  os R OK       print  File exists and is readable   else      print  Either the file is missing or not readable

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use os path exists   to get file exist or not   path     home ie SachinSaga scripts subscription unit reader file   def file check at location filename       return os path exists path   str filename  replace            file name  dummy txt  responce   file check at location file name   if responce     print  file found at location   else     print  file not found at location

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You should definitely use this one  from os path import exists  if exists  quot file quot      True      print  quot File exists  quot  elif exists  quot file quot      False      print  quot File doesn t exist  quot

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You could try this  safer    try        http   effbot org zone python-with-statement htm        with  is safer to open a file     with open  whatever txt   as fh            Do something with  fh  except IOError as e      print        format e     The ouput would be        Errno 2  No such file or directory     whatever txt     Then  depending on the result  your program can just keep running from there or you can code to stop it if you want

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Prefer the try statement  It s considered better style and avoids race conditions   Don t take my word for it  There s plenty of support for this theory  Here s a couple    Style  Section  Handling unusual conditions  of http   allendowney com sd notes notes11 txt Avoiding Race Conditions

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It isn t needed probably but if it is  here s some code  import os  def file exists path  filename       for file or folder in os listdir path           if file or folder    filename              return True     return False

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Adding one more slight variation which isn t exactly reflected in the other answers   This will handle the case of the file path being None or empty string     def file exists file path       if not file path          return False     elif not os path isfile file path           return False     else          return True   Adding a variant based on suggestion from Shahbaz   def file exists file path       if not file path          return False     else          return os path isfile file path    Adding a variant based on suggestion from Peter Wood   def file exists file path       return file path and os path isfile file path

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You can use os listdir to check if a file is in a certain directory   import os if  file ext  in os listdir  dirpath         code

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You can use the following open method to check if a file exists   readable   file   open inputFile   r   file close

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If the reason you re checking is so you can do something like if file exists  open it    it s safer to use a try around the attempt to open it  Checking and then opening risks the file being deleted or moved or something between when you check and when you try to open it   If you re not planning to open the file immediately  you can use os path isfile     Return True if path is an existing regular file  This follows symbolic links  so both islink   and isfile   can be true for the same path    import os path os path isfile fname     if you need to be sure it s a file   Starting with Python 3 4  the pathlib module offers an object-oriented approach  backported to pathlib2 in Python 2 7    from pathlib import Path  my file   Path   path to file   if my file is file          file exists   To check a directory  do   if my file is dir          directory exists   To check whether a Path object exists independently of whether is it a file or directory  use exists     if my file exists          path exists   You can also use resolve strict True  in a try block   try      my abs path   my file resolve strict True  except FileNotFoundError        doesn t exist else        exists

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import os  Your path here e g   C  Program Files text txt   For access purposes   C   Program Files  text txt  if os path exists  C                print  File found   else      print  File not found     Importing os makes it easier to navigate and perform standard actions with your operating system    For reference also see How to check whether a file exists using Python   If you need high-level operations  use shutil

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Prefer the try statement  It s considered better style and avoids race conditions   Don t take my word for it  There s plenty of support for this theory  Here s a couple    Style  Section  Handling unusual conditions  of http   allendowney com sd notes notes11 txt Avoiding Race Conditions

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You have the os path exists function   import os path os path exists file path    This returns True for both files and directories but you can instead use  os path isfile file path    to test if it s a file specifically  It follows symlinks

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You can write Brian s suggestion without the try    from contextlib import suppress  with suppress IOError   open  filename        process     suppress is part of Python 3 4  In older releases you can quickly write your own suppress   from contextlib import contextmanager   contextmanager def suppress  exceptions       try          yield     except exceptions          pass

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Testing for files and folders with os path isfile    os path isdir   and os path exists    Assuming that the  path  is a valid path  this table shows what is returned by each function for files and folders     You can also test if a file is a certain type of file using os path splitext   to get the extension  if you don t already know it    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  path    path to a word document   gt  gt  gt  os path isfile path  True  gt  gt  gt  os path splitext path  1       docx    test if the extension is  docx True

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Use the following code  def findfile self  filepath    flag   false   for filename in os listdir filepath      if filename     quot your file name quot        flag   true       break     else        print  quot no file found quot     if flag    true      return true   else      return false

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if os path isfile path to file       try           open path to file              pass     except IOError as e          print  Unable to open file       Raising exceptions is considered to be an acceptable  and Pythonic    approach for flow control in your program  Consider handling missing   files with IOErrors  In this situation  an IOError exception will be   raised if the file exists but the user does not have read permissions    SRC  http   www pfinn net python-check-if-file-exists html

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Although I always recommend using try and except statements  here are a few possibilities for you  my personal favourite is using os access     Try opening the file   Opening the file will always verify the existence of the file  You can make a function just like so   def File Existence filepath       f   open filepath      return True   If it s False  it will stop execution with an unhanded IOError or OSError in later versions of Python  To catch the exception  you have to use a try except clause  Of course  you can always use a try except  statement like so  thanks to hsandt for making me think    def File Existence filepath       try          f   open filepath      except IOError  OSError    Note OSError is for later versions of Python         return False      return True  Use os path exists path    This will check the existence of what you specify  However  it checks for files and directories so beware about how you use it   import os path  gt  gt  gt  os path exists  this is a directory   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists  this is a file txt   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists  not a directory   False  Use os access path  mode    This will check whether you have access to the file  It will check for permissions  Based on the os py documentation  typing in os F OK  it will check the existence of the path  However  using this will create a security hole  as someone can attack your file using the time between checking the permissions and opening the file  You should instead go directly to opening the file instead of checking its permissions   EAFP vs LBYP   If you re not going to open the file afterwards  and only checking its existence  then you can use this   Anyway  here    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os access   is a file txt   os F OK  True    I should also mention that there are two ways that you will not be able to verify the existence of a file  Either the issue will be permission denied or no such file or directory  If you catch an IOError  set the IOError as e  like my first option   and then type in print e args  so that you can hopefully determine your issue  I hope it helps

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How do I check whether a file exists  without using the try statement    In 2016  this is still arguably the easiest way to check if both a file exists and if it is a file   import os os path isfile    file txt        Returns True if exists  else False   isfile is actually just a helper method that internally uses os stat and stat S ISREG mode  underneath  This os stat is a lower-level method that will provide you with detailed information about files  directories  sockets  buffers  and more  More about os stat here  Note  However  this approach will not lock the file in any way and therefore your code can become vulnerable to  time of check to time of use   TOCTTOU  bugs   So raising exceptions is considered to be an acceptable  and Pythonic  approach for flow control in your program  And one should consider handling missing files with IOErrors  rather than if statements  just an advice

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You can use the  OS  library of Python    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os path exists  C   Users        Desktop  test txt    True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists  C   Users        Desktop  test tx   False

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If you imported NumPy already for other purposes then there is no need to import other libraries like pathlib  os  paths  etc   import numpy as np np DataSource   exists  path to your file     This will return true or false based on its existence

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import os path  def isReadableFile file path  file name       full path   file path         file name     try          if not os path exists file path               print  File path is invalid               return False         elif not os path isfile full path               print  File does not exist               return False         elif not os access full path  os R OK               print  File cannot be read               return False         else              print  File can be read               return True     except IOError as ex          print  I O error  0     1   format ex errno  ex strerror      except Error as ex          print  Error  0     1   format ex errno  ex strerror      return False  ------------------------------------------------------  path     usr khaled documents puzzles  fileName    puzzle 1 txt   isReadableFile path  fileName

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Python 3 4  has an object-oriented path module  pathlib   Using this new module  you can check whether a file exists like this  import pathlib p   pathlib Path  path to file   if p is file       or p is dir   to see if it is a directory       do stuff  You can  and usually should  still use a try except block when opening files  try      with p open   as f            do awesome stuff except OSError      print  Well darn     The pathlib module has lots of cool stuff in it  convenient globbing  checking file s owner  easier path joining  etc   It s worth checking out   If you re on an older Python  version 2 6 or later   you can still install pathlib with pip    installs pathlib2 on older Python versions   the original third-party module  pathlib  is no longer maintained  pip install pathlib2  Then import it as follows    Older Python versions import pathlib2 as pathlib

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It isn t needed probably but if it is  here s some code  import os  def file exists path  filename       for file or folder in os listdir path           if file or folder    filename              return True     return False

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import os os path exists path    Returns whether the path  directory or file  exists or not os path isfile path    Returns whether the file exists or not

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import os path    path to dir  root dirs files   os walk path  next   if myfile in files     print  yes it exists    This is helpful when checking for several files  Or you want to do a set intersection  subtraction with an existing list

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if os path isfile path to file       try           open path to file              pass     except IOError as e          print  Unable to open file       Raising exceptions is considered to be an acceptable  and Pythonic    approach for flow control in your program  Consider handling missing   files with IOErrors  In this situation  an IOError exception will be   raised if the file exists but the user does not have read permissions    SRC  http   www pfinn net python-check-if-file-exists html

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Adding one more slight variation which isn t exactly reflected in the other answers   This will handle the case of the file path being None or empty string     def file exists file path       if not file path          return False     elif not os path isfile file path           return False     else          return True   Adding a variant based on suggestion from Shahbaz   def file exists file path       if not file path          return False     else          return os path isfile file path    Adding a variant based on suggestion from Peter Wood   def file exists file path       return file path and os path isfile file path

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I m the author of a package that s been around for about 10 years  and it has a function that addresses this question directly  Basically  if you are on a non-Windows system  it uses Popen to access find   However  if you are on Windows  it replicates find with an efficient filesystem walker   The code itself does not use a try block    except in determining the operating system and thus steering you to the  Unix -style find or the hand-buillt find  Timing tests showed that the try was faster in determining the OS  so I did use one there  but nowhere else     gt  gt  gt  import pox  gt  gt  gt  pox find   python    type  file   root pox homedir    recurse False     Users mmckerns  python     And the doc      gt  gt  gt  print pox find   doc   find patterns  root recurse type    Get path to a file or directory      patterns  name or partial name string of items to search for     root  path string of top-level directory to search     recurse  if True  recurse down from root directory     type  item filter  one of  None  file  dir  link  socket  block  char      verbose  if True  be a little verbose about the search      On some OS  recursion can be specified by recursion depth  an integer       patterns can be specified with basic pattern matching  Additionally      multiple patterns can be specified by splitting patterns with a         For example           gt  gt  gt  find  pox    root                  Users foo pox pox     Users foo pox scripts pox launcher py             gt  gt  gt  find   shutils   init               Users foo pox pox shutils py     Users foo pox pox   init   py     gt  gt  gt    The implementation  if you care to look  is here  https   github com uqfoundation pox blob 89f90fb308f285ca7a62eabe2c38acb87e89dad9 pox shutils py L190

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This is the simplest way to check if a file exists  Just because the file existed when you checked doesn t guarantee that it will be there when you need to open it   import os fname    foo txt  if os path isfile fname       print  file does exist at this time   else      print  no such file exists at this time

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Prefer the try statement  It s considered better style and avoids race conditions   Don t take my word for it  There s plenty of support for this theory  Here s a couple    Style  Section  Handling unusual conditions  of http   allendowney com sd notes notes11 txt Avoiding Race Conditions

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You can use the  OS  library of Python    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os path exists  C   Users        Desktop  test txt    True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists  C   Users        Desktop  test tx   False

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import os  Your path here e g   C  Program Files text txt   For access purposes   C   Program Files  text txt  if os path exists  C                print  File found   else      print  File not found     Importing os makes it easier to navigate and perform standard actions with your operating system    For reference also see How to check whether a file exists using Python   If you need high-level operations  use shutil

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import os os path exists path    Returns whether the path  directory or file  exists or not os path isfile path    Returns whether the file exists or not

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You have the os path exists function   import os path os path exists file path    This returns True for both files and directories but you can instead use  os path isfile file path    to test if it s a file specifically  It follows symlinks

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You can use the following open method to check if a file exists   readable   file   open inputFile   r   file close

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This is the simplest way to check if a file exists  Just because the file existed when you checked doesn t guarantee that it will be there when you need to open it   import os fname    foo txt  if os path isfile fname       print  file does exist at this time   else      print  no such file exists at this time

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How do I check whether a file exists  without using the try statement    In 2016  this is still arguably the easiest way to check if both a file exists and if it is a file   import os os path isfile    file txt        Returns True if exists  else False   isfile is actually just a helper method that internally uses os stat and stat S ISREG mode  underneath  This os stat is a lower-level method that will provide you with detailed information about files  directories  sockets  buffers  and more  More about os stat here  Note  However  this approach will not lock the file in any way and therefore your code can become vulnerable to  time of check to time of use   TOCTTOU  bugs   So raising exceptions is considered to be an acceptable  and Pythonic  approach for flow control in your program  And one should consider handling missing files with IOErrors  rather than if statements  just an advice

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If the reason you re checking is so you can do something like if file exists  open it    it s safer to use a try around the attempt to open it  Checking and then opening risks the file being deleted or moved or something between when you check and when you try to open it   If you re not planning to open the file immediately  you can use os path isfile     Return True if path is an existing regular file  This follows symbolic links  so both islink   and isfile   can be true for the same path    import os path os path isfile fname     if you need to be sure it s a file   Starting with Python 3 4  the pathlib module offers an object-oriented approach  backported to pathlib2 in Python 2 7    from pathlib import Path  my file   Path   path to file   if my file is file          file exists   To check a directory  do   if my file is dir          directory exists   To check whether a Path object exists independently of whether is it a file or directory  use exists     if my file exists          path exists   You can also use resolve strict True  in a try block   try      my abs path   my file resolve strict True  except FileNotFoundError        doesn t exist else        exists

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If you imported NumPy already for other purposes then there is no need to import other libraries like pathlib  os  paths  etc   import numpy as np np DataSource   exists  path to your file     This will return true or false based on its existence

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Although I always recommend using try and except statements  here are a few possibilities for you  my personal favourite is using os access     Try opening the file   Opening the file will always verify the existence of the file  You can make a function just like so   def File Existence filepath       f   open filepath      return True   If it s False  it will stop execution with an unhanded IOError or OSError in later versions of Python  To catch the exception  you have to use a try except clause  Of course  you can always use a try except  statement like so  thanks to hsandt for making me think    def File Existence filepath       try          f   open filepath      except IOError  OSError    Note OSError is for later versions of Python         return False      return True  Use os path exists path    This will check the existence of what you specify  However  it checks for files and directories so beware about how you use it   import os path  gt  gt  gt  os path exists  this is a directory   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists  this is a file txt   True  gt  gt  gt  os path exists  not a directory   False  Use os access path  mode    This will check whether you have access to the file  It will check for permissions  Based on the os py documentation  typing in os F OK  it will check the existence of the path  However  using this will create a security hole  as someone can attack your file using the time between checking the permissions and opening the file  You should instead go directly to opening the file instead of checking its permissions   EAFP vs LBYP   If you re not going to open the file afterwards  and only checking its existence  then you can use this   Anyway  here    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os access   is a file txt   os F OK  True    I should also mention that there are two ways that you will not be able to verify the existence of a file  Either the issue will be permission denied or no such file or directory  If you catch an IOError  set the IOError as e  like my first option   and then type in print e args  so that you can hopefully determine your issue  I hope it helps

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You can use os listdir to check if a file is in a certain directory   import os if  file ext  in os listdir  dirpath         code

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Additionally  os access     if os access  myfile   os R OK       with open  myfile   as fp          return fp read     Being R OK  W OK  and X OK the flags to test for permissions  doc

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import os path  if os path isfile filepath      print  quot File exists quot

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exists   and is file   methods of  Path  object can be used for checking if a given path exists and is a file   Python 3 program to check if a file exists     File name   check-if-file-exists py  from pathlib import Path  filePath   Path input  Enter path of the file to be found       if filePath exists   and filePath is file        print  Success  File exists   else      print  Error  File does not exist     Output        python3 check-if-file-exists py        Enter path of the file to be found   Users macuser1 stack-overflow index html       Success  File exists        python3 check-if-file-exists py        Enter path of the file to be found  hghjg jghj      Error  File does not exist

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I m the author of a package that s been around for about 10 years  and it has a function that addresses this question directly  Basically  if you are on a non-Windows system  it uses Popen to access find   However  if you are on Windows  it replicates find with an efficient filesystem walker   The code itself does not use a try block    except in determining the operating system and thus steering you to the  Unix -style find or the hand-buillt find  Timing tests showed that the try was faster in determining the OS  so I did use one there  but nowhere else     gt  gt  gt  import pox  gt  gt  gt  pox find   python    type  file   root pox homedir    recurse False     Users mmckerns  python     And the doc      gt  gt  gt  print pox find   doc   find patterns  root recurse type    Get path to a file or directory      patterns  name or partial name string of items to search for     root  path string of top-level directory to search     recurse  if True  recurse down from root directory     type  item filter  one of  None  file  dir  link  socket  block  char      verbose  if True  be a little verbose about the search      On some OS  recursion can be specified by recursion depth  an integer       patterns can be specified with basic pattern matching  Additionally      multiple patterns can be specified by splitting patterns with a         For example           gt  gt  gt  find  pox    root                  Users foo pox pox     Users foo pox scripts pox launcher py             gt  gt  gt  find   shutils   init               Users foo pox pox shutils py     Users foo pox pox   init   py     gt  gt  gt    The implementation  if you care to look  is here  https   github com uqfoundation pox blob 89f90fb308f285ca7a62eabe2c38acb87e89dad9 pox shutils py L190

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import os path  if os path isfile filepath      print  quot File exists quot

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Although almost every possible way has been listed in  at least one of  the existing answers  e g  Python 3 4 specific stuff was added   I ll try to group everything together   Note  every piece of Python standard library code that I m going to post  belongs to version 3 5 3   Problem statement    Check file  arguable  also folder   special  file     existence Don t use try   except   else   finally blocks   Possible solutions       Python 3   os path exists path   also check other function family members like os path isfile  os path isdir  os path lexists for slightly different behaviors   os path exists path       Return True if path refers to an existing path or an open file descriptor  Returns False for broken symbolic links  On some platforms  this function may return False if permission is not granted to execute os stat   on the requested file  even if the path physically exists    All good  but if following the import tree    os path - posixpath py  ntpath py    genericpath py  line   20   def exists path          Test whether a path exists   Returns False for broken symbolic links        try          st   os stat path      except os error          return False     return True     it s just a try   except block around  Python 3   os stat path     dir fd None  follow symlinks True   So  your code is try   except free  but lower in the framestack there s  at least  one such block  This also applies to other funcs  including os path isfile    1 1   Python 3   Path is file     It s a fancier  and more pythonic  way of handling paths  but Under the hood  it does exactly the same thing  pathlib py  line   1330    def is file self               Whether this path is a regular file  also True for symlinks pointing     to regular files               try          return S ISREG self stat   st mode      except OSError as e          if e errno not in  ENOENT  ENOTDIR               raise           Path doesn t exist or is a broken symlink            see https   bitbucket org pitrou pathlib issue 12           return False    Python 3   With Statement Context Managers  Either    Create one   class Swallow     Dummy example     swallowed exceptions    FileNotFoundError        def   enter   self           print  Entering           def   exit   self  exc type  exc value  exc traceback           print  Exiting    exc type  exc value  exc traceback          return exc type in Swallow swallowed exceptions    only swallow FileNotFoundError  not e g  TypeError - if the user passes a wrong argument like None or float or         And its usage - I ll replicate the os path isfile behavior  note that this is just for demonstrating purposes  do not attempt to write such code for production    import os import stat   def isfile seaman path      Dummy func     result   False     with Swallow            result   stat S ISREG os stat path  st mode      return result   Use  Python 3   contextlib suppress  exceptions  - which was specifically designed for selectively suppressing exceptions   But  they seem to be wrappers over try   except   else   finally blocks  as  Python 3   The with statement states      This allows common try   except   finally usage patterns to be encapsulated for convenient reuse   Filesystem traversal functions  and search the results for matching item s      Python 3   os listdir path       or  Python 3   os scandir path      on Python v3 5   backport   PyPI   scandir    Under the hood  both use    Nix   man7   OPENDIR 3     man7   READDIR 3     man7   CLOSEDIR 3  Win   MS Docs   FindFirstFileW function    MS Docs   FindNextFileW function    MS Docs   FindClose function   via  GitHub   python cpython -  master  cpython Modules posixmodule c      Using scandir   instead of listdir   can significantly increase the performance of code that also needs file type or file attribute information  because os DirEntry objects expose this information if the operating system provides it when scanning a directory  All os DirEntry methods may perform a system call  but is dir   and is file   usually only require a system call for symbolic links  os DirEntry stat   always requires a system call on Unix but only requires one for symbolic links on Windows    Python 3   os walk top  topdown True  onerror None  followlinks False    It uses os listdir  os scandir when available    Python 3   glob iglob pathname     recursive False   or its predecessor  glob glob    Doesn t seem a traversing function per se  at least in some cases   but it still uses os listdir    Since these iterate over folders   in most of the cases  they are inefficient for our problem  there are exceptions  like non wildcarded globbing - as  ShadowRanger pointed out   so I m not going to insist on them  Not to mention that in some cases  filename processing might be required   Python 3   os access path  mode     dir fd None  effective ids False  follow symlinks True  whose behavior is close to os path exists  actually it s wider  mainly because of the 2nd argument    user permissions might restrict the file  visibility  as the doc states         test if the invoking user has the specified access to path  mode should be F OK to test the existence of path       os access   tmp   os F OK   Since I also work in C  I use this method as well because under the hood  it calls native APIs  again  via    PYTHON SRC DIR  Modules posixmodule c    but it also opens a gate for possible user errors  and it s not as Pythonic as other variants  So  as  AaronHall rightly pointed out  don t use it unless you know what you re doing    Nix   man7   ACCESS 2       pay attention to the note about the security hole its usage might introduce      Win   MS Docs   GetFileAttributesW function   Note  calling native APIs is also possible via  Python 3   ctypes - A foreign function library for Python  but in most cases it s more complicated    Win specific   Since vcruntime   msvcr    dll exports a  MS Docs    access   waccess function family as well  here s an example    Python 3 5 3  v3 5 3 1880cb95a742  Jan 16 2017  16 02 32   MSC v 1900 64 bit  AMD64   on win32 Type  help    copyright    credits  or  license  for more information   gt  gt  gt  import os  ctypes  gt  gt  gt  ctypes CDLL  msvcrt    waccess u C   Windows  System32  cmd exe   os F OK  0  gt  gt  gt  ctypes CDLL  msvcrt    waccess u C   Windows  System32  cmd exe notexist   os F OK  -1    Notes    Although it s not a good practice  I m using os F OK in the call  but that s just for clarity  its value is 0  I m using  waccess so that the same code works on Python3 and Python2  in spite of unicode related differences between them  Although this targets a very specific area  it was not mentioned in any of the previous answers   The Lnx  Ubtu  16 x64   counterpart as well    Python 3 5 2  default  Nov 17 2016  17 05 23   GCC 5 4 0 20160609  on linux Type  help    copyright    credits  or  license  for more information   gt  gt  gt  import os  ctypes  gt  gt  gt  ctypes CDLL   lib x86 64-linux-gnu libc so 6   access b  tmp   os F OK  0  gt  gt  gt  ctypes CDLL   lib x86 64-linux-gnu libc so 6   access b  tmp notexist   os F OK  -1    Notes    Instead hardcoding libc s path    lib x86 64-linux-gnu libc so 6   which may  and most likely  will  vary across systems  None  or the empty string  can be passed to CDLL constructor  ctypes CDLL None  access b  tmp   os F OK    According to  man7   DLOPEN 3       If filename is NULL  then the returned handle is for the main   program   When given to dlsym    this handle causes a search for a   symbol in the main program  followed by all shared objects loaded at   program startup  and then all shared objects loaded by dlopen   with   the flag RTLD GLOBAL     Main  current  program  python  is linked against libc  so its symbols  including access  will be loaded This has to be handled with care  since functions like main  Py Main and  all the  others are available  calling them could have disastrous effects  on the current program  This doesn t also apply to Win  but that s not such a big deal  since msvcrt dll is located in   SystemRoot  System32  which is in  PATH  by default   I wanted to take things further and replicate this behavior on Win  and submit a patch   but as it turns out   MS Docs   GetProcAddress function only  sees  exported symbols  so unless someone declares the functions in the main executable as   declspec dllexport   why on Earth the regular person would do that    the main program is loadable but pretty much unusable   Install some third-party module with filesystem capabilities  Most likely  will rely on one of the ways above  maybe with slight customizations   One example would be  again  Win specific   GitHub   mhammond pywin32 - Python for Windows  pywin32  Extensions  which is a Python wrapper over WINAPIs   But  since this is more like a workaround  I m stopping here  Another  lame  workaround  gainarie  is  as I like to call it   the sysadmin approach  use Python as a wrapper to execute shell commands   Win     py35x64 test  e  Work Dev StackOverflow q000082831 gt  e  Work Dev VEnvs py35x64 test Scripts python exe  -c  import os  print os system  dir  b   C   Windows  System32  cmd exe    gt  nul 2 gt  amp 1     0   py35x64 test  e  Work Dev StackOverflow q000082831 gt  e  Work Dev VEnvs py35x64 test Scripts python exe  -c  import os  print os system  dir  b   C   Windows  System32  cmd exe notexist    gt  nul 2 gt  amp 1     1   Nix  Lnx  Ubtu       cfati cfati-ubtu16x64-0    gt  python3 -c  import os  print os system  ls    tmp    gt   dev null 2 gt  amp 1     0  cfati cfati-ubtu16x64-0    gt  python3 -c  import os  print os system  ls    tmp notexist    gt   dev null 2 gt  amp 1     512      Bottom line    Do use try   except   else   finally blocks  because they can prevent you running into a series of nasty problems  A counter-example that I can think of  is performance  such blocks are costly  so try not to place them in code that it s supposed to run hundreds of thousands times per second  but since  in most cases  it involves disk access  it won t be the case     Final note s     I will try to keep it up to date  any suggestions are welcome  I will incorporate anything useful that will come up into the answer

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import os    for testing purpose args defaulted to current folder  amp  file     returns True if file found def file exists FOLDER PATH        FILE NAME   file         return os path isdir FOLDER PATH            and os path isfile os path join FOLDER PATH  FILE NAME     Basically a folder check  then a file check with proper directory separator using os path join

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In 2016 the best way is still using os path isfile    gt  gt  gt  os path isfile   path to some file txt     Or in Python 3 you can use pathlib   import pathlib path   pathlib Path   path to some file txt   if path is file

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import os  Your path here e g   C  Program Files text txt   For access purposes   C   Program Files  text txt  if os path exists  C                print  File found   else      print  File not found     Importing os makes it easier to navigate and perform standard actions with your operating system    For reference also see How to check whether a file exists using Python   If you need high-level operations  use shutil

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TL DR To quickly check the existence of a file or a folder  use the Path module  Here is a single line code  after import   from pathlib import Path if Path  quot myfile txt quot   exists      works for both file and folders       do stuffs     The pathlib module was introduced in Python 3 4  so you need to have Python 3 4   this lib makes your life much easier and it is pretty to use  here is more doc about it  https   docs python org 3 library pathlib html   BTW  if you are going to reuse the path  then it is better to assign it to a variable so will become from pathlib import Path p   Path  quot loc of myfile txt quot   if p exists      works for both file and folders       do stuffs

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You could try this  safer    try        http   effbot org zone python-with-statement htm        with  is safer to open a file     with open  whatever txt   as fh            Do something with  fh  except IOError as e      print        format e     The ouput would be        Errno 2  No such file or directory     whatever txt     Then  depending on the result  your program can just keep running from there or you can code to stop it if you want

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if os path isfile path to file       try           open path to file              pass     except IOError as e          print  Unable to open file       Raising exceptions is considered to be an acceptable  and Pythonic    approach for flow control in your program  Consider handling missing   files with IOErrors  In this situation  an IOError exception will be   raised if the file exists but the user does not have read permissions    SRC  http   www pfinn net python-check-if-file-exists html

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import os path  if os path isfile filepath      print  quot File exists quot

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Date 2017-12-04  Every possible solution has been listed in other answers   An intuitive and arguable way to check if a file exists is the following   import os os path isfile    file md      Returns True if exists  else False   additionaly check a dir os path isdir    folder      Returns True if the folder exists  else False   check either a dir or a file os path exists    file     I made an exhaustive cheatsheet for your reference    os path methods in exhaustive cheatsheet   definition     dirname                   basename                   abspath                   relpath                   commonpath                   normpath                   realpath     operation     split    splitdrive    splitext                   join    normcase     compare     samefile    sameopenfile    samestat     condition     isdir                  isfile                  exists                  lexists                 islink                  isabs                  ismount       expand     expanduser                expandvars      stat     getatime    getctime    getmtime              getsize

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Additionally  os access     if os access  myfile   os R OK       with open  myfile   as fp          return fp read     Being R OK  W OK  and X OK the flags to test for permissions  doc

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Python 3 4  has an object-oriented path module  pathlib   Using this new module  you can check whether a file exists like this  import pathlib p   pathlib Path  path to file   if p is file       or p is dir   to see if it is a directory       do stuff  You can  and usually should  still use a try except block when opening files  try      with p open   as f            do awesome stuff except OSError      print  Well darn     The pathlib module has lots of cool stuff in it  convenient globbing  checking file s owner  easier path joining  etc   It s worth checking out   If you re on an older Python  version 2 6 or later   you can still install pathlib with pip    installs pathlib2 on older Python versions   the original third-party module  pathlib  is no longer maintained  pip install pathlib2  Then import it as follows    Older Python versions import pathlib2 as pathlib

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Adding one more slight variation which isn t exactly reflected in the other answers   This will handle the case of the file path being None or empty string     def file exists file path       if not file path          return False     elif not os path isfile file path           return False     else          return True   Adding a variant based on suggestion from Shahbaz   def file exists file path       if not file path          return False     else          return os path isfile file path    Adding a variant based on suggestion from Peter Wood   def file exists file path       return file path and os path isfile file path

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Use os path isfile   with os access     import os  PATH      file txt  if os path isfile PATH  and os access PATH  os R OK       print  File exists and is readable   else      print  Either the file is missing or not readable

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You can use the following open method to check if a file exists   readable   file   open inputFile   r   file close

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Additionally  os access     if os access  myfile   os R OK       with open  myfile   as fp          return fp read     Being R OK  W OK  and X OK the flags to test for permissions  doc

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import os  Your path here e g   C  Program Files text txt   For access purposes   C   Program Files  text txt  if os path exists  C                print  File found   else      print  File not found     Importing os makes it easier to navigate and perform standard actions with your operating system    For reference also see How to check whether a file exists using Python   If you need high-level operations  use shutil

[python] How do I check whether a file exists without exceptions?

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