Question

I want to write a function named size() which will accept either a file name or a list of filenames and return the size of the file or sum of its sizes respectively. How to do this without function overloading which is not available in python?

thanks

suresh

Answer 1

I recommend using overloading internally as it is most intuitive to a user of the function

import os

def file_size(files):

    if isinstance(files, str):
        files = [files] # enlist

    size = 0
    for f in files:
        size += os.path.getsize(f)

    return size


if __name__ == '__main__':
    print file_size(__file__)
    print file_size([__file__, __file__])
    print file_size([])