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?

Answer 1

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.