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

Date:2017-12-04

Every possible solution has been listed in other answers.

An intuitive and arguable way to check if a file exists is the following:

import os
os.path.isfile('~/file.md')  # Returns True if exists, else False
# additionaly check a dir
os.path.isdir('~/folder')  # Returns True if the folder exists, else False
# check either a dir or a file
os.path.exists('~/file')

I made an exhaustive cheatsheet for your reference:

#os.path methods in exhaustive cheatsheet
{'definition': ['dirname',
               'basename',
               'abspath',
               'relpath',
               'commonpath',
               'normpath',
               'realpath'],
'operation': ['split', 'splitdrive', 'splitext',
               'join', 'normcase'],
'compare': ['samefile', 'sameopenfile', 'samestat'],
'condition': ['isdir',
              'isfile',
              'exists',
              'lexists'
              'islink',
              'isabs',
              'ismount',],
 'expand': ['expanduser',
            'expandvars'],
 'stat': ['getatime', 'getctime', 'getmtime',
          'getsize']}