How to get all of the immediate subdirectories in Python

Question

I\'m trying to write a simple Python script that will copy a index.tpl to index.html in all of the subdirectories (with a few exceptions).

I\'m getting bogged down

Answer 1

Why has no one mentioned glob? glob lets you use Unix-style pathname expansion, and is my go to function for almost everything that needs to find more than one path name. It makes it very easy:

from glob import glob
paths = glob('*/')

Note that glob will return the directory with the final slash (as unix would) while most path based solutions will omit the final slash.

Answer 2

os.walk is your friend in this situation.

Straight from the documentation:

walk() generates the file names in a directory tree, by walking the tree either top down or bottom up. For each directory in the tree rooted at directory top (including top itself), it yields a 3-tuple (dirpath, dirnames, filenames).

Answer 3

import glob
import os

def child_dirs(path):
     cd = os.getcwd()        # save the current working directory
     os.chdir(path)          # change directory 
     dirs = glob.glob("*/")  # get all the subdirectories
     os.chdir(cd)            # change directory to the script original location
     return dirs

The child_dirs function takes a path a directory and returns a list of the immediate subdirectories in it.

dir
 |
  -- dir_1
  -- dir_2

child_dirs('dir') -> ['dir_1', 'dir_2']

Answer 4

Here's one way:

import os
import shutil

def copy_over(path, from_name, to_name):
  for path, dirname, fnames in os.walk(path):
    for fname in fnames:
      if fname == from_name:
        shutil.copy(os.path.join(path, from_name), os.path.join(path, to_name))


copy_over('.', 'index.tpl', 'index.html')

Answer 5

I have to mention the path.py library, which I use very often.

Fetching the immediate subdirectories become as simple as that:

my_dir.dirs()

The full working example is:

from path import Path

my_directory = Path("path/to/my/directory")

subdirs = my_directory.dirs()

NB: my_directory still can be manipulated as a string, since Path is a subclass of string, but providing a bunch of useful methods for manipulating paths

Answer 6

import pathlib


def list_dir(dir):
    path = pathlib.Path(dir)
    dir = []
    try:
        for item in path.iterdir():
            if item.is_dir():
                dir.append(item)
        return dir
    except FileNotFoundError:
        print('Invalid directory')