Question

I have a directory structure that resembles the following:

Dir1
Dir2
Dir3
Dir4
    L SubDir4.1
    L SubDir4.2
    L SubDir4.3

I want to generate a list of files (with full paths) that include all the contents of Dirs1-3, but only SubDir4.2 inside Dir4. The code I have so far is

import fnmatch
import os

for root, dirs, files in os.walk( '.' )
    if 'Dir4' in dirs:
        if not 'SubDir4.2' in 'Dir4':
            dirs.remove( 'Dir4' )
    for file in files
        print os.path.join( root, file )

My problem is that the part where I attempt to exclude any file that does not have SubDir4.2 in it’s path is excluding everything in Dir4, including the things I would like to remain. How should I amend that above to to do what I desire?

Update 1: I should add that there are a lot of directories below Dir4 so manually listing them in an excludes list isn’t a practical option. I’d like to be able to specify SubDur4.2 as the only subdirectory within Dir4 to be read.

Update 2: For reason outside of my control, I only have access to Python version 2.4.3.

Answer 1

There are a few typos in your snippet. I propose this:

import os

def any_p(iterable):
    for element in iterable:
        if element:
            return True
    return False

include_dirs = ['Dir4/SubDir4.2', 'Dir1/SubDir4.2', 'Dir3', 'Dir2'] # List all your included folder names in that


for root, dirs, files in os.walk( '.' ):
    dirs[:] = [d for d in dirs if any_p(d in os.path.join(root, q_inc) for q_inc in include_dirs)]

    for file in files:
        print file

EDIT: According to comments, I have changed that so this is include list, instead of an exclude one.

EDIT2: Added a any_p (any() equivalent function for python version < 2.5)

EDIT3bis: if you have other subfolders with the same name ‘SubDir4.2’ in other folders, you can use the following to specify the location:

include_dirs = ['Dir4/SubDir4.2', 'Dir1/SubDir4.2']

Assuming you have a Dir1/SubDir4.2.

If they are a lot of those, then you may want to refine this approach with fnmatch, or probably a regex query.