Question

I have this python script

#!/usr/bin/env python
import datetime, os
from time import gmtime, strftime

to_backup = "/home/vmware/tobackup"
var1 = datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%b-%d-%I%p')
for f in os.listdir(to_backup):
    if(os.path.isfile(f)):
        print f + " is a file"
    if(os.path.isdir(f)):
        print f + " is a directory"

It is giving me empty ouput. i don’t know where is the problem

OUTPUT FOR dr jimbob answer

total 36
-rwxrwxr-x 1 vmware vmware  440 May  5 07:41 back.py
-rwxrwxr-x 1 vmware vmware 2624 May  4 20:35 backup.sh
drwxr-xr-x 2 vmware vmware 4096 Jun 22  2010 Desktop
drwxrwxr-x 2 vmware vmware 4096 May  5 03:51 destination
drwxr-xr-x 2 root   root   4096 May  4 18:49 public_html
drwxrwxr-x 2 vmware vmware 4096 May  1 07:47 python
-rwxrwxr-x 1 vmware vmware  560 May  1 13:20 regex.py
drwxrwxrwx 7 vmware vmware 4096 May  5 03:50 tobackup
total 20
drwxrwxrwx 2 vmware vmware 4096 May  5 03:50 five
drwxrwxrwx 2 vmware vmware 4096 May  5 03:50 four
drwxrwxrwx 2 vmware vmware 4096 May  5 03:50 one
drwxrwxrwx 2 vmware vmware 4096 May  5 03:50 three
drwxrwxrwx 2 vmware vmware 4096 May  5 03:50 two

Answer 1

Ok you have permission, but you aren’t in the right directory when you list through the files. list_dir gives you a list of dirs/files without their path, and os.path.isfile('one') and os.path.isdir('one') will check whether the directory ‘one’ exists in the current directory (wherever you launched the script from, unless you explicitly changed directory with os.chdir or included the path, e.g., os.path.isdir('/home/vmware/tobackup/one').

#!/usr/bin/env python
import datetime, os
from time import gmtime, strftime
import subprocess

to_backup = "/home/vmware/tobackup"
var1 = datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%b-%d-%I%p')

os.chdir(to_backup)
# os.listdir(to_backup) = ['one', 'two', 'three', 'four', 'five']
for f in os.listdir(to_backup):
    if(os.path.isfile(f)):
        print f + " is a file"
    if(os.path.isdir(f)):
        print f + " is a directory"

or

to_backup = "/home/vmware/tobackup"
var1 = datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%b-%d-%I%p')
# os.listdir(to_backup) = ['one', 'two', 'three', 'four', 'five']
for f in os.listdir(to_backup):
    if(os.path.isfile(os.path.join(to_backup,f))):
        print f + " is a file"
    if(os.path.isdir(os.path.join(to_backup,f))):
        print f + " is a directory"

or with walk (but not actually walking through subdirs).

to_backup = "/home/vmware/tobackup"
var1 = datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%b-%d-%I%p')

root, dirs, files in os.walk(to_backup).next()
for file in files:
    print f + " is a file in " + root
for dir in dirs:
    print f + " is a directory"

EDIT: To be even clearer, the mistake with your original script is you have a file structure like:

/home/user/bin/your_script.py
/home/vmware/tobackup/
/home/vmware/tobackup/one
/home/vmware/tobackup/two
...

When you go to /home/user/bin to run your script (e.g., python your_script.py), os.listdir('/home/vmware/tobackup') gives you a list of file and dir names in /home/vmware/tobackup, that is ['one','two', ...]. However, when you do os.path.isfile('one') from the directory /home/user/bin, you check to see if /home/user/bin/one is a file, not whether /home/vmware/tobackup/one is a file. Since /home/user/bin/one doesn’t exist, you get no output.