I’m trying to make a script to list all directory, subdirectory, and files in a given directory.
I tried this:

import sys,os

root = "/home/patate/directory/"
path = os.path.join(root, "targetdirectory")

for r,d,f in os.walk(path):
    for file in f:
        print os.path.join(root,file)

Unfortunatly it doesn’t work properly.
I get all the files, but not their complete paths.

For example if the dir struct would be:

/home/patate/directory/targetdirectory/123/456/789/file.txt

It would print:

/home/patate/directory/targetdirectory/file.txt

What I need is the first result. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

Use os.path.join to concatenate the directory and file name:

for path, subdirs, files in os.walk(root):
    for name in files:
        print os.path.join(path, name)

Note the usage of path and not root in the concatenation, since using root would be incorrect.

In Python 3.4, the pathlib module was added for easier path manipulations. So the equivalent to os.path.join would be:

pathlib.PurePath(path, name)

The advantage of pathlib is that you can use a variety of useful methods on paths. If you use the concrete Path variant you can also do actual OS calls through them, like changing into a directory, deleting the path, opening the file it points to and much more.

Just in case… Getting all files in the directory and subdirectories matching some pattern (*.py for example):

import os
from fnmatch import fnmatch

root = '/some/directory'
pattern = "*.py"

for path, subdirs, files in os.walk(root):
    for name in files:
        if fnmatch(name, pattern):
            print os.path.join(path, name)

Here is a one-liner:

import os

[val for sublist in [[os.path.join(i[0], j) for j in i[2]] for i in os.walk('./')] for val in sublist]
# Meta comment to ease selecting text

The outer most val for sublist in ... loop flattens the list to be one dimensional. The j loop collects a list of every file basename and joins it to the current path. Finally, the i loop iterates over all directories and sub directories.

This example uses the hard-coded path ./ in the os.walk(...) call, you can supplement any path string you like.

Note: os.path.expanduser and/or os.path.expandvars can be used for paths strings like ~/

Extending this example:

Its easy to add in file basename tests and directoryname tests.

For Example, testing for *.jpg files:

... for j in i[2] if j.endswith('.jpg')] ...

Additionally, excluding the .git directory:

... for i in os.walk('./') if '.git' not in i[0].split('/')]

Couldn’t comment so writing answer here. This is the clearest one-line I have seen:

import os
[os.path.join(path, name) for path, subdirs, files in os.walk(root) for name in files]

You can take a look at this sample I made. It uses the os.path.walk function which is deprecated beware.Uses a list to store all the filepaths

root = "Your root directory"
ex = ".txt"
where_to = "Wherever you wanna write your file to"
def fileWalker(ext,dirname,names):
    '''
    checks files in names'''
    pat = "*" + ext[0]
    for f in names:
        if fnmatch.fnmatch(f,pat):
            ext[1].append(os.path.join(dirname,f))


def writeTo(fList):

    with open(where_to,"w") as f:
        for di_r in fList:
            f.write(di_r + "\n")






if __name__ == '__main__':
    li = []
    os.path.walk(root,fileWalker,[ex,li])

    writeTo(li)

A bit simpler one-liner:

import os
from itertools import product, chain

chain.from_iterable([[os.sep.join(w) for w in product([i[0]], i[2])] for i in os.walk(dir)])

Since every example here is just using walk (with join), i’d like to show a nice example and comparison with listdir:

import os, time

def listFiles1(root): # listdir
    allFiles = []; walk = [root]
    while walk:
        folder = walk.pop(0)+"/"; items = os.listdir(folder) # items = folders + files
        for i in items: i=folder+i; (walk if os.path.isdir(i) else allFiles).append(i)
    return allFiles

def listFiles2(root): # listdir/join (takes ~1.4x as long) (and uses '\\' instead)
    allFiles = []; walk = [root]
    while walk:
        folder = walk.pop(0); items = os.listdir(folder) # items = folders + files
        for i in items: i=os.path.join(folder,i); (walk if os.path.isdir(i) else allFiles).append(i)
    return allFiles

def listFiles3(root): # walk (takes ~1.5x as long)
    allFiles = []
    for folder, folders, files in os.walk(root):
        for file in files: allFiles+=[folder.replace("\\","/")+"/"+file] # folder+"\\"+file still ~1.5x
    return allFiles

def listFiles4(root): # walk/join (takes ~1.6x as long) (and uses '\\' instead)
    allFiles = []
    for folder, folders, files in os.walk(root):
        for file in files: allFiles+=[os.path.join(folder,file)]
    return allFiles


for i in range(100): files = listFiles1("src") # warm up

start = time.time()
for i in range(100): files = listFiles1("src") # listdir
print("Time taken: %.2fs"%(time.time()-start)) # 0.28s

start = time.time()
for i in range(100): files = listFiles2("src") # listdir and join
print("Time taken: %.2fs"%(time.time()-start)) # 0.38s

start = time.time()
for i in range(100): files = listFiles3("src") # walk
print("Time taken: %.2fs"%(time.time()-start)) # 0.42s

start = time.time()
for i in range(100): files = listFiles4("src") # walk and join
print("Time taken: %.2fs"%(time.time()-start)) # 0.47s

So as you can see for yourself, the listdir version is much more efficient. (and that join is slow)