How do I list all files of a directory?

Question

How can I list all files of a directory in Python and add them to a list?

Answer 1

os.listdir() will get you everything that's in a directory - files and directories.

If you want just files, you could either filter this down using os.path:

from os import listdir from os.path import isfile, join onlyfiles = [f for f in listdir(mypath) if isfile(join(mypath, f))] 

or you could use os.walk() which will yield two lists for each directory it visits - splitting into files and dirs for you. If you only want the top directory you can break the first time it yields

from os import walk  f = [] for (dirpath, dirnames, filenames) in walk(mypath):     f.extend(filenames)     break 

or, shorter:

from os import walk  filenames = next(walk(mypath), (None, None, []))[2]  # [] if no file 

Answer 2

I prefer using the glob module, as it does pattern matching and expansion.

import glob print(glob.glob("/home/adam/*")) 

It does pattern matching intuitively

import glob # All files and directories ending with .txt and that don't begin with a dot: print(glob.glob("/home/adam/*.txt"))  # All files and directories ending with .txt with depth of 2 folders, ignoring names beginning with a dot: print(glob.glob("/home/adam/*/*.txt"))  

It will return a list with the queried files and directories:

['/home/adam/file1.txt', '/home/adam/file2.txt', .... ] 

Note that glob ignores files and directories that begin with a dot ., as those are considered hidden files and directories, unless the pattern is something like .*.

Use glob.escape to escape strings that are not meant to be patterns:

print(glob.glob(glob.escape(directory_name) + "/*.txt"))