Get absolute paths of all files in a directory

Question

How do I get the absolute paths of all the files in a directory that could have many sub-folders in Python?

I know os.walk() recursively gives me a list

Answer 1

If you have Python 3.4 or newer you can use pathlib (or a third-party backport if you have an older Python version):

import pathlib
for filepath in pathlib.Path(directory).glob('**/*'):
    print(filepath.absolute())

Answer 2

You can use os.path.abspath() to turn relative paths into absolute paths:

file_paths = []

for folder, subs, files in os.walk(rootdir):
  for filename in files:
    file_paths.append(os.path.abspath(os.path.join(folder, filename)))

Answer 3

Try:

from pathlib import Path
path = 'Desktop'
files = filter(lambda filepath: filepath.is_file(), Path(path).glob('*'))
for file in files:
   print(file.absolute())

Answer 4

I wanted to keep the subdirectory details and not the files and wanted only subdirs with one xml file in them. I can do it this way:

for rootDirectory, subDirectories, files in os.walk(eventDirectory):
  for subDirectory in subDirectories:
    absSubDir = os.path.join(rootDirectory, subDirectory)
    if len(glob.glob(os.path.join(absSubDir, "*.xml"))) == 1:
      print "Parsing information in " + absSubDir

Answer 5

Starting with python 3.5 the idiomatic solution would be:

import os

def absolute_file_paths(directory):
    path = os.path.abspath(directory)
    return [entry.path for entry in os.scandir(path) if entry.is_file()]

This not just reads nicer but also is faster in many cases. For more details (like ignoring symlinks) see original python docs: https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#os.scandir

Answer 6

All files and folders:

x = [os.path.abspath(os.path.join(directory, p)) for p in os.listdir(directory)]

Images (.jpg | .png):

x = [os.path.abspath(os.path.join(directory, p)) for p in os.listdir(directory) if p.endswith(('jpg', 'png'))]