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

I'm the author of a package that's been around for about 10 years, and it has a function that addresses this question directly. Basically, if you are on a non-Windows system, it uses Popen to access find. However, if you are on Windows, it replicates find with an efficient filesystem walker.

The code itself does not use a try block… except in determining the operating system and thus steering you to the "Unix"-style find or the hand-buillt find. Timing tests showed that the try was faster in determining the OS, so I did use one there (but nowhere else).

>>> import pox
>>> pox.find('*python*', type='file', root=pox.homedir(), recurse=False)
['/Users/mmckerns/.python']

And the doc…

>>> print pox.find.__doc__
find(patterns[,root,recurse,type]); Get path to a file or directory

    patterns: name or partial name string of items to search for
    root: path string of top-level directory to search
    recurse: if True, recurse down from root directory
    type: item filter; one of {None, file, dir, link, socket, block, char}
    verbose: if True, be a little verbose about the search

    On some OS, recursion can be specified by recursion depth (an integer).
    patterns can be specified with basic pattern matching. Additionally,
    multiple patterns can be specified by splitting patterns with a ';'
    For example:
        >>> find('pox*', root='..')
        ['/Users/foo/pox/pox', '/Users/foo/pox/scripts/pox_launcher.py']

        >>> find('*shutils*;*init*')
        ['/Users/foo/pox/pox/shutils.py', '/Users/foo/pox/pox/__init__.py']

>>>

The implementation, if you care to look, is here: https://github.com/uqfoundation/pox/blob/89f90fb308f285ca7a62eabe2c38acb87e89dad9/pox/shutils.py#L190