Question

Why does this recursive function keep returning multiple dictionaries instead of just one.

def retFiles(dir):
    data = {}
    root = set()
    os.chdir(dir)
    cwd = os.getcwd()
    for i in os.listdir(cwd):
        if os.path.isfile(i):
            data.setdefault(i, set())
            root.add(os.path.relpath(dir).replace("\\", "/"))
            data[i] = root
        else:
            preisci(i)
    print(data)

Answer 1

Actually it makes sense why the method would return a list of lists (if the print(data) line is actually supposed to be the return).

    if os.path.isfile(i):
        data.setdefault(i, set())
        root.add(os.path.relpath(dir).replace("\\", "/"))
        data[i] = root
    else:
        preisci(i)

The line

data[i] = root

is assigning a list of paths to the i’th index of data. So if we are supposed to be returning data then data will contain multiple lists of paths.