I have a C++/Obj-C background and I am just discovering Python (been writing it for about an hour). I am writing a script to recursively read the contents of text files in a folder structure.
The problem I have is the code I have written will only work for one folder deep. I can see why in the code (see #hardcoded path
), I just don't know how I can move forward with Python since my experience with it is only brand new.
Python Code:
import os
import sys
rootdir = sys.argv[1]
for root, subFolders, files in os.walk(rootdir):
for folder in subFolders:
outfileName = rootdir + "/" + folder + "/py-outfile.txt" # hardcoded path
folderOut = open( outfileName, 'w' )
print "outfileName is " + outfileName
for file in files:
filePath = rootdir + '/' + file
f = open( filePath, 'r' )
toWrite = f.read()
print "Writing '" + toWrite + "' to" + filePath
folderOut.write( toWrite )
f.close()
folderOut.close()
Make sure you understand the three return values of os.walk
:
for root, subdirs, files in os.walk(rootdir):
has the following meaning:
root
: Current path which is "walked through"subdirs
: Files in root
of type directoryfiles
: Files in root
(not in subdirs
) of type other than directoryAnd please use os.path.join
instead of concatenating with a slash! Your problem is filePath = rootdir + '/' + file
- you must concatenate the currently "walked" folder instead of the topmost folder. So that must be filePath = os.path.join(root, file)
. BTW "file" is a builtin, so you don't normally use it as variable name.
Another problem are your loops, which should be like this, for example:
import os
import sys
walk_dir = sys.argv[1]
print('walk_dir = ' + walk_dir)
# If your current working directory may change during script execution, it's recommended to
# immediately convert program arguments to an absolute path. Then the variable root below will
# be an absolute path as well. Example:
# walk_dir = os.path.abspath(walk_dir)
print('walk_dir (absolute) = ' + os.path.abspath(walk_dir))
for root, subdirs, files in os.walk(walk_dir):
print('--\nroot = ' + root)
list_file_path = os.path.join(root, 'my-directory-list.txt')
print('list_file_path = ' + list_file_path)
with open(list_file_path, 'wb') as list_file:
for subdir in subdirs:
print('\t- subdirectory ' + subdir)
for filename in files:
file_path = os.path.join(root, filename)
print('\t- file %s (full path: %s)' % (filename, file_path))
with open(file_path, 'rb') as f:
f_content = f.read()
list_file.write(('The file %s contains:\n' % filename).encode('utf-8'))
list_file.write(f_content)
list_file.write(b'\n')
If you didn't know, the with
statement for files is a shorthand:
with open('filename', 'rb') as f:
dosomething()
# is effectively the same as
f = open('filename', 'rb')
try:
dosomething()
finally:
f.close()