Question

I am trying to do something to all the files under a given path. I don’t want to collect all the file names beforehand then do something with them, so I tried this:

import os
import stat

def explore(p):
  s = ''
  list = os.listdir(p)
  for a in list:
    path = p + '/' + a
    stat_info = os.lstat(path )
    if stat.S_ISDIR(stat_info.st_mode):
     explore(path)
    else:
      yield path

if __name__ == "__main__":
  for x in explore('.'):
    print '-->', x

But this code skips over directories when it hits them, instead of yielding their contents. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Use os.walk instead of reinventing the wheel.

In particular, following the examples in the library documentation, here is an untested attempt:

import os
from os.path import join

def hellothere(somepath):
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(somepath):
        for curfile in files:
            yield join(root, curfile)


# call and get full list of results:
allfiles = [ x for x in hellothere("...") ]

# iterate over results lazily:
for x in hellothere("..."):
    print x