Find all files in a directory with extension .txt in Python

Answer 1

I like os.walk():

import os

for root, dirs, files in os.walk(dir):
    for f in files:
        if os.path.splitext(f)[1] == '.txt':
            fullpath = os.path.join(root, f)
            print(fullpath)

Or with generators:

import os

fileiter = (os.path.join(root, f)
    for root, _, files in os.walk(dir)
    for f in files)
txtfileiter = (f for f in fileiter if os.path.splitext(f)[1] == '.txt')
for txt in txtfileiter:
    print(txt)

Answer 2

Something like this will work:

>>> import os
>>> path = '/usr/share/cups/charmaps'
>>> text_files = [f for f in os.listdir(path) if f.endswith('.txt')]
>>> text_files
['euc-cn.txt', 'euc-jp.txt', 'euc-kr.txt', 'euc-tw.txt', ... 'windows-950.txt']

Answer 3

You can simply use pathlibs glob ¹:

import pathlib

list(pathlib.Path('your_directory').glob('*.txt'))

or in a loop:

for txt_file in pathlib.Path('your_directory').glob('*.txt'):
    # do something with "txt_file"

If you want it recursive you can use .glob('**/*.txt)

---

¹The pathlib module was included in the standard library in python 3.4. But you can install back-ports of that module even on older Python versions (i.e. using conda or pip): pathlib and pathlib2.

Answer 4

I did a test (Python 3.6.4, W7x64) to see which solution is the fastest for one folder, no subdirectories, to get a list of complete file paths for files with a specific extension.

To make it short, for this task os.listdir() is the fastest and is 1.7x as fast as the next best: os.walk() (with a break!), 2.7x as fast as pathlib, 3.2x faster than os.scandir() and 3.3x faster than glob.
Please keep in mind, that those results will change when you need recursive results. If you copy/paste one method below, please add a .lower() otherwise .EXT would not be found when searching for .ext.

import os
import pathlib
import timeit
import glob

def a():
    path = pathlib.Path().cwd()
    list_sqlite_files = [str(f) for f in path.glob("*.sqlite")]

def b(): 
    path = os.getcwd()
    list_sqlite_files = [f.path for f in os.scandir(path) if os.path.splitext(f)[1] == ".sqlite"]

def c():
    path = os.getcwd()
    list_sqlite_files = [os.path.join(path, f) for f in os.listdir(path) if f.endswith(".sqlite")]

def d():
    path = os.getcwd()
    os.chdir(path)
    list_sqlite_files = [os.path.join(path, f) for f in glob.glob("*.sqlite")]

def e():
    path = os.getcwd()
    list_sqlite_files = [os.path.join(path, f) for f in glob.glob1(str(path), "*.sqlite")]

def f():
    path = os.getcwd()
    list_sqlite_files = []
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(path):
        for file in files:
            if file.endswith(".sqlite"):
                list_sqlite_files.append( os.path.join(root, file) )
        break



print(timeit.timeit(a, number=1000))
print(timeit.timeit(b, number=1000))
print(timeit.timeit(c, number=1000))
print(timeit.timeit(d, number=1000))
print(timeit.timeit(e, number=1000))
print(timeit.timeit(f, number=1000))

Results:

# Python 3.6.4
0.431
0.515
0.161
0.548
0.537
0.274

Answer 5

In case the folder contains a lot of files or memory is an constraint, consider using generators:

def yield_files_with_extensions(folder_path, file_extension):
   for _, _, files in os.walk(folder_path):
       for file in files:
           if file.endswith(file_extension):
               yield file

Option A: Iterate

for f in yield_files_with_extensions('.', '.txt'): 
    print(f)

Option B: Get all

files = [f for f in yield_files_with_extensions('.', '.txt')]

Answer 6

To get all '.txt' file names inside 'dataPath' folder as a list in a Pythonic way:

from os import listdir
from os.path import isfile, join
path = "/dataPath/"
onlyTxtFiles = [f for f in listdir(path) if isfile(join(path, f)) and  f.endswith(".txt")]
print onlyTxtFiles