How to check to see if a folder contains files using python 3

Question

I\'ve searched everywhere for this answer but can\'t find it.

I\'m trying to come up with a script that will search for a particular subfolder then check if it conta

Answer 1

Check if the folder contains files:

import os
import shutil

if len(os.listdir(folder_path)) == 0: # Check is empty..
    shutil.rmtree(folder_path) # Delete..

Answer 2

You can make use of the new pathlib library introduced in Python 3.4 to extract all non-empty subdirectories recursively, eg:

import pathlib

root = pathlib.Path('some/path/here')
non_empty_dirs = {str(p.parent) for p in root.rglob('*') if p.is_file()}

Since you have to walk the tree anyway, we build a set of the parent directories where a file is present which results in a set of directories that contain files - then do as you wish with the result.

Answer 3

If you can delete the directory, you can use this:

my_path = os.path.abspath("something")               
try:
    os.rmdir(my_path)
    is_empty = True
    # Do you need to keep the directory? Recreate it!
    # os.makedirs(my_path, exist_ok=True)
except OSError:
    is_empty = False

if is_empty:
    pass

The os.rmdir only removes a directory if it is empty, otherwise it throws the OSError exception.

You can find a discussion about this on:

1. https://bytes.com/topic/python/answers/157394-how-determine-if-folder-empty

For example, deleting an empty directory is fine when you are planing to do a git clone, but not if you are checking beforehand whether the directory is empty, so your program does not throw an empty directory error.

Answer 4

You can directly use the generator instead of converting to a set or (ordered) list first:

from pathlib import Path

p = Path('abc')

def check_dir(p):

    if not p.exists():
        print('This directory is non-existent')
        return

    try:
        next(p.rglob('*'))
    except StopIteration:
        print('This directory is empty')
        return

    print('OK')

Answer 5

entities = os.listdir(dirpath)
for entity in entities:
    if os.path.isfile(entity):
        print(dirpath)
        break

Answer 6

'files' already tells you whats in the directory. Just check it:

for dirpath, dirnames, files in os.walk('.'):
    if files:
        print(dirpath, 'has files')
    if not files:
        print(dirpath, 'is empty')