Python List All Files in Directory [5 Best Methods]

There can be many cases where you need to list all files in the Directory in Python. Whether it is data files, code files, or any other file type, listing all the files in a directory can be a quite useful operation.

Python has a lot of libraries to list all files and directories in a directory. In this article, We used os, glob and path modules to list files in a directory and filter based on the file type, and file name and listed down ways to list files and subdirectories recursively.

Quick Summary

We recommend you choose one of the following methods based on your requirements.

For all the below methods, we will use test folder as input. As shown in the below images, test directory is having 4 files and 2 subfolders.

• a.txt: file
• b.txt: file
• c.txt: file
• python: folder
• .txt: file
• .test1: folder – empty folder

And the subfolder python is having the below 3 files in it.

• d.txt: file
• e.txt: file
• f.txt: file

Python List All Files and Directories in a Directory

We have listed down 5 methods to list all files and subdirectories in a directory.

• All the methods return both files and subfolders
• Does not work recursively and returns files and folders from one direct level only.

Skip to other sections directly, if you are either looking for only files listing or recursive listing of files in a directory.

Method 1: Using listdir() from os library

The listdir() function from os library takes path parameter and returns a list of subfolders and file names. We can use this method to get all the files in a directory in Python.

Notes:

• Path: String – The path parameter is optional, when you don’t pass the path parameter, the default value will be the current path(‘.’)
• The listdir() returns both folders and file names from one direct level only, not recursively.
• Returns only string names but not the other file information.

Code Thread:

import os

path = '/home/user/Desktop/test'

# listdir method lists both files and folders
all_entries = os.listdir(path)

print(all_entries)

Output:

['b.txt', 'c.txt', 'a.txt', 'python']

Method 2: Use glob() from glob module

The glob() method from glob module can be used to list files and directories of a directory. Following are the noteworthy points about glob() method.

• It takes a path pattern as an input parameter and a boolean flag named recursive.
• Returns a list of full path strings that matched the given path pattern
• Internally it wraps the iglob() method which returns an iterator of strings
• The glob() method does not match the files and folders starting with dot(.)
• Returns only full path string but not the other file meta information.

Code Thread:

import glob

print(glob.glob('/home/user/Desktop/test/*'))

Output:

['/home/user/Desktop/test/b.txt', '/home/user/Desktop/test/c.txt', '/home/user/Desktop/test/a.txt', '/home/user/Desktop/test/python']

Code Thread for files listing in folder with relative paths:

You can use os.relpath() to extract relative paths of files.

import glob

all_entries = glob.glob('/home/user/Desktop/test/*')
rel_entries = [os.path.relpath(entry, path) for entry in all_entries]

print(rel_entries)

Output:

['b.txt', 'c.txt', 'a.txt', 'python']

Method 3: Use scandir() from os module

Alternatively, You can use scandir() from os module to list all files in a folder in Python.

• Takes a path parameter as input and returns an iterator object with all the directory entries.
• As it returns a list of DirEntry objects, you will be able to access other file information as well. Following are a few important properties of a DirEntry object.
  1. name: returns the name of the file
  2. path: returns the path of the file
  3. stat(): returns an object with file properties like size, permissions/mode, access timestamps
  4. is_file(): returns True when the given entry is a file otherwise False
  5. is_directory(): returns True when the given entry is a folder otherwise False.

Code Thread:

import os

path = '/home/user/Desktop/test'
files = [file.name for file in os.scandir(path)]
print(files)

Output:

['b.txt', 'c.txt', 'a.txt', 'python']

Method 4: Using Path.iterdir() from pathlib module

Similar to scandir(), iterdir() method also returns an iterator of DirEntry objects which contain both files and folders. Following are a few important points about iterdir() method.

• It does not return files and folders whose names start with the dot(.)
• Returns the FileNotFoundError when an invalid path is given.
• Unlike the glob() function, it does not support pattern-matching paths.

Code Thread:

import pathlib

path = '/home/user/Desktop/test'
all_entries = [entry.name for entry in pathlib.Path(path).iterdir()]
print(all_entries)

Output:

['b.txt', 'c.txt', 'a.txt', 'python']

Method 5: Using Path.glob() from pathlib module

Like scandir() and glob() method from the glob module, this method also returns an iterator of Path objects. In addition, it also supports pattern-matching paths.

This method does not return an error when the unknown path is given, instead, it returns an empty iterator.

Code Thread:

import pathlib

path = '/home/user/Desktop/test'
all_entries = [entry.name for entry in pathlib.Path(path).glob('*')]

print(all_entries)

Output:

['b.txt', 'c.txt', 'a.txt', 'python']

Python List only files in a Directory

All the solutions from the above section list both files and folders from a directory. In this section, we will go through methods that list only files in a directory.

Method 1: Using listdir() from os library

The listdir() function from the os library returns both files and folder names as a list of strings. Hence it is difficult to find out whether the given name represents a file or a directory.

We will filter out files with the below steps:

• Step 1: Build the full path of the file, with os.path.join() method which takes a base path and file name, concatenates them, and returns the full path.
• Step 2: Use os.path.isfile() method with the full path passed as a parameter, to know whether the path represents a file or a folder.

Code Thread:

import os.path

path = '/home/user/Desktop/test'

# os.listdir to get all files and folder in given path
# os.path.file(path) returns True if path represents file
# os.path.join(path1, path2) it concatenates path, file to get full path

all_files = os.listdir(path)
only_files = [file for file in all_files if os.path.isfile(os.path.join(path, file))]

print(only_files)

Output:

['b.txt', 'c.txt', 'a.txt']

Method 2: Use glob() from glob module

Alternatively, You can also use the glob() function from the glob module to list only files in a folder. This method also returns list of strings of full paths, we will have to use os.path.isfile() to filter the files.

This method returns full paths, use os.path.relpath(file_path, base_path) to get the file names.

Code Thread:

import glob
import os.path


current_path = '/home/user/Desktop/test'
all_entries = [ entry for entry in glob.glob(current_path+'/**')]
all_files = [entry for entry in all_entries if os.path.isfile(entry)]

print(all_files)

Output:

['/home/user/Desktop/test/b.txt', '/home/user/Desktop/test/c.txt', '/home/user/Desktop/test/a.txt']

Method 3: scandir() from os library

Like listdir() function, scandir() also returns a list of files and folders but as an iterator of DirEntry objects. The DirEntry object has useful properties to fetch information about a particular entry. Following are a few such properties.

• is_file()
• is_dir()
• stat()
• name

We can use isfile() method to know whether the entry is a file or a directory.

Code Thread:

import os

path = '/home/user/Desktop/test'
files = [file.name for file in os.scandir(path) if file.is_file()]
print(files)

Output:

['b.txt', 'c.txt', 'a.txt']

Method 4: Using iterdir() from path module

Similar to scandir() from os module, iterdir() returns a list of files and directories in a folder as an iterator of Path objects. We can use is_file() method of Path to identify whether the entry is a file or a folder.

Code Thread:

import pathlib

path = '/home/user/Desktop/test'
all_entries = [entry.name for entry in pathlib.Path(path).iterdir() if entry.is_file()]

print(all_entries)

Output:

['b.txt', 'c.txt', 'a.txt']

Method 5: Use glob() from path module

The glob() from path module is similar to iterdir() in returning files and folders as an iterator of Path objects. As in the above method, we can is_file() to filter out only files.

Code Thread:

import pathlib

path = '/home/user/Desktop/test'
all_entries = [entry.name for entry in pathlib.Path(path).glob('*') if entry.is_file()]

print(all_entries)

Output:

['b.txt', 'c.txt', 'a.txt']

Python List all files in a directory recursively

So far, we have seen methods to list all files and folders in a directory and methods to list only files in a directory. As you have observed, all these methods do not list files and folders from subfolders, just list entries from the one direct level.

Now we will see solutions to list all files in a folder recursively.

Method 1. Use the glob() from glob module

The glob() function from the glob module takes recursive parameter which decides whether the function returns files and subfolders recursively or not.

Notes:
1. glob() supports path patterns for conditional scanning of a folder.

2. It returns empty iterator when invalid path is given

3. The glob() method does not return files and folders whose name is starting with dot '.'

Code Thread:

import glob

path = '/home/user/Desktop/test/'
pattern = '**'

all_entries = glob.glob(path+pattern, recursive=True)
all_files = [entry for entry in all_entries if os.path.isfile(os.path.join(path, entry))]
all_folders = [entry for entry in all_entries if os.path.isdir(os.path.join(path, entry))]

print(all_files)
print(all_folders)

Output:

['/home/user/Desktop/test/b.txt', '/home/user/Desktop/test/c.txt', '/home/user/Desktop/test/a.txt', '/home/user/Desktop/test/python/f.txt', '/home/user/Desktop/test/python/e.txt', '/home/user/Desktop/test/python/d.txt']

['/home/user/Desktop/test/', '/home/user/Desktop/test/python']

Method 2. Using Path.rglob() from pathlib module

Alternatively, You can also use rglob() method from the pathlib module to list the entries recursively. Following are the noteworthy points about rglob() method.

Notes:
1. rglob() function supports path pattern for conditional listing. Path pattern is based on Unix wildcard commands.

2. Does not return any error if given path is incorrect but returns empty iterator.

3. It even returns files and folders that starts with dot(.)

Code Thread:

import pathlib

path = '/home/user/Desktop/test'
all_entries = [entry for entry in pathlib.Path(path).rglob('*')]
all_files = [entry.name for entry in all_entries if entry.is_file()]
all_folders = [entry.name for entry in all_entries if entry.is_dir()]

print(all_files)
print(all_folders)

Output:

['.txt', 'b.txt', 'c.txt', 'a.txt', 'f.txt', 'e.txt', 'd.txt']
['.test1', 'python']

Method 3: walk() from os module

The walk() method from the os module takes the string path as an input parameter and returns the below three details for the given root folder and all the subfolders.

• root: string – root folder path
• directories: list(str) – all directory names from the root directory
• files: list(str) – all file names from the root directory

Notes:

1. Does not support conditional listing based on Path patterns

2. Returns empty iterator when incorrect path is given.

Code Thread:

import os

path = '/home/user/Desktop/test'

all_entries = [files + directories for root, directories, files in os.walk(path)]

all_entries_flattened = []
for entries in all_entries:
    all_entries_flattened.extend(entries)

print(all_entries_flattened)

Output:

['b.txt', 'c.txt', 'a.txt', 'python', 'f.txt', 'e.txt', 'd.txt']

List files in directory with pattern matching

The methods mentioned below will help you if you’re searching for a way to list all files of a particular type in a folder. Following are a few cases where the below methods will be useful.

• List all files ending with a certain keyword in a folder, ex: ‘.txt’ files in a folder, ‘.csv’ files in a folder
• List all files starting with a particular name, ex: all files starting with ‘20221226’
• List all files containing a word in a folder, ex: all files containing the ‘python’ word

In short, below 2 methods works with unix wildcard characters.

Wildcard	Description	Wildcard String	Matching Examples	Non-Matching Examples
?	Matches with only one character	a?	aa, ab, ac, a1, a!	aaa, ba
*	Matches with zero or more characters	a*	a, aa, aaa, abb, aaad, aa12	baaa, eaaa, da
[]	matches with characters mentioned with the brackets []	b[amd]t	bat, bmt, and bdt	bamt, badt

• Other useful wildcards – {}, [!] and \

Method 1: Using glob() from glob module

Below is an example to get list files ending with ‘.txt’ in a directory. Similarly you can use ‘*.csv’ for getting only files ending with ‘.csv’.

Notes:
1. The glob.glob() method does not list files recursively, as recursive is False by default. If you need recursive listing then need to send  recursive parameter as True.

2. This method returns both files and folders, Use os.path.isfile(os.path.join(current_path, entry) to get only files.

3. glob() method returns full paths of files, To get only file names use os.path.relpath(entry, path)

Code Thread:

import glob

path = '/home/user/Desktop/test/'
pattern = '*.txt'

all_entries = glob.glob(path + pattern)
print(all_entries)

Output:

['/home/user/Desktop/test/b.txt', '/home/user/Desktop/test/c.txt', '/home/user/Desktop/test/a.txt']

Method 2: Use glob() from path module

Similarly we can glob() function from path module to list only particular types of files and folders in a directory.

Notes:
1. glob() function path module does not list files recursively. You need to use rglob() function to list files recursively.

2. This method lists both files and subfolders, use entry.is_file() method to list only files.

Code Thread:

import pathlib

path = '/home/user/Desktop/test'
pattern = '*on'

all_entries = [entry.name for entry in pathlib.Path(path).glob(pattern)]

print(all_entries)

Output:

['python']

Frequently Asked Questions

We have listed down different ways to get the list of all files in a directory using Python. For more insightful posts, follow CodeThreads.