Python program to list all files in a directory

Method 1 - Using os.listdir()

You can use os.listdir() to get you everything that is present in a directory (both files and directories).

Example

import os

# List everything in current directory
print(os.listdir())

# List everything in a different directory
print(os.listdir('C:\\Users\\91824\\'))

The above code gets you every file and directory present in the path.

Method 2 - Using os.path

If you just want files, you could filter the above code down using os.path and isfile.

from os import listdir
from os.path import isfile, join

dir_to_search = 'C:\\Users\\91824\\'

for file in listdir(dir_to_search):
    if isfile(join(dir_to_search, file)):
        print(file)

Method 3 - Using os.walk()

You could also use os.walk() function which will generate the file names present in a directory by going through the directory tree, either top-down or bottom-up.

import os

dir_to_search = 'C:\\Users\\91824\\'
files = []
for (dirpath, dirnames, filenames) in os.walk(dir_to_search, topdown=True):
    files.append(filenames)

You could also make it shorter.

import os

dir_to_search = 'C:\\Users\\91824\\'
_, _, filenames = next(os.walk(dir_to_search))

Method 4 - Using glob module for pattern matching

If you want to search for only specific types of files like .txt or .csv, use the glob module. It will return a list of files matching the pattern.

import glob

dir_to_search = 'C:\\Users\\91824\\'
pattern = "*.txt"
print(glob.glob(dir_to_search+"\\"+pattern))

This method doesn’t search for the files in the subdirectories. To search in all the subdirectories, use os.walk with the glob module

import os
import glob

dir_to_search = 'C:\\Users\\91824\\PycharmProjects'
pattern = "*.py"
files = []
for (dirpath, dirnames, filenames) in os.walk(dir_to_search, topdown=True):
    for dir in dirnames:
        print(glob.glob(os.path.join(dirpath, dir)+"\\"+pattern))

Related Reading

Python program to find the path of a given file

Learn how to find the path of any file in Python.

PyleninLenin Mishra