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 contains any files and, if so, write out the path of the folder. I've gotten the subfolder search part figured out, but the checking for files is stumping me.

I have found multiple suggestions for how to check if a folder is empty, and I've tried to modify the scripts to check if the folder is not empty, but I'm not getting the right results.

Here is the script that has come the closest:

for dirpath, dirnames, files in os.walk('.'):
if os.listdir(dirpath)==[]:
    print(dirpath)

This will list all subfolders that are empty, but if I try to change it to:

if os.listdir(dirpath)!=[]:
    print(dirpath)

it will list everything--not just those subfolders containing files.

I would really appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction.

This is for Python 3.4, if that matters.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Answer 1

'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')

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

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

Answer 4

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

try:
    os.rmdir( submodule_absolute_path )
    is_empty = 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 5

Adding to @Jon Clements’ pathlib answer, I wanted to check if the folder is empty with pathlib but without creating a set:

from pathlib import Path

is_empty = not bool(sorted(Path('some/path/here').rglob('*')))

sorted(Path(path_here).rglob('*')) return a list of sorted PosixPah items. If there is no items, it returns an empty list, which is False. So is_empty will be True if the path is empty and false if the path have something

Similar idea results {} and [] gives the same:

Answer 6

You can use this simple code:

dir_contents = [x for x in os.listdir('.') if not x.startswith('.')]
if len(dir_contents) > 0:
    print("Directory contains files")

It checks for files and directories in the current working directory (.). You can change . in os.listdir() to check any other directory.