Question

I have a hashtable in python of strings. So, each entry is a string. The strings could possibly start with “/” which implies they are file names.
What would be a quick way to take a hashtable like this, and for each string in it that starts with a “/” verify whether the file exists?
If the file does not exist, then the

Answer 1

To find if the string begins with a forward slash:

str.startswith('/')

or

str[0] == '/'

To find if a file is valid:

import os.path
os.path.exists(str)

You can loop through your hashtable using a for statement. Putting it all together (assuming the potential paths are the values in the hashtable [called a dict in python]):

import os.path

for val in table.values():
    if val.startswith('/') and not os.path.exists(val):
        print "BAD FILE!!! ", val