file walking in python

Question

So, I've got a working solution, but it's ugly and seems un-idiomatic. The problem is this:

For a directory tree, where every directory is set up to have:

• 1 .xc file
• at least 1 .x file
• any number of directories which follow the same format

and nothing else. I'd like to, given the root path and walk the tree applying xc() to the contents of .xc fies, x to the contents to .x files, and then doing the same thing to child folders' contents.

Actual code with explanation would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Answer 1

The function os.walk recursively walks through a directory tree, returning all file and subdirectory names.

So all you have to do is detect the .x and .xc extensions from the filenames and apply your functions when they do (untested code follows):

import os

for dirpath, dnames, fnames in os.walk("./"):
    for f in fnames:
        if f.endswith(".x"):
            x(os.path.join(dirpath, f))
        elif f.endswith(".xc"):
            xc(os.path.join(dirpath,f))

This assumes x and xc can be called on filenames; alternately you can read the contents first and pass that as a string to the functions.