Python Files and Directories Managment

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In this article, we will learn about Python files and directories management. We often come across use cases wherein we want to some or other operation on  files and directories separately. For such use cases, we first have to segregate files and directories and then operate on  them separately. For example, let’s say we want to list down only the directories in a specific path in Linux and traverse each directory. To do so, we can first separate the files and directories and store them in a dictionary data structure. Later store the dictionary key values where directories are placed in a new list  We will then apply the logic to traverse each directory in this new list.

 

Python Files and Directories Managment

Python OS and JSON Module Overview

OS Module

OS module in Python provides a variety of functions to interact with the operating system and perform various system related operations. OS module is used to perform various operations on files and directories, environment variables, gather information about the operating system and so on. It is also used to interact with running process in the system or creating new processes.

JSON Module

JSON module in python is mostly used for encoding and decoding of JSON data. JSON dumps function is used to convert Python objects (list, string, dictionary etc.) into JSON representation. JSON module is also used to read and write data from and to JSON files. it also supports error handling classes that deals with JSON related errors.

 

Prerequisite

  • Linux Operating System
  • Python3 Installed
  • IDE (Jupyter notebook, VS Code etc)

 

Python Files and Directories Managment

Also read: [Solved] bash: ifconfig: command not found

Below is the Python code which can be used to segregate Files and Directories from a given path in Linux and store them in a dictionary. Save the code in a file called vehicle.py.

import os

import json

PATH='/root/vehicle/python'

LIST_PATH = os.listdir(PATH)

SEPARATE_LIST = {"file": [], "directory": []}

DIR_PATHS = [os.path.join(PATH, item) for item in LIST_PATH]

def segregateCWD():

    for path in DIR_PATHS:

        if os.path.isdir(path):

            SEPARATE_LIST['directory'].append(path)

        if os.path.isfile(path):

            SEPARATE_LIST['file'].append(path)

    print(json.dumps(SEPARATE_LIST, indent=4, sort_keys=True))

    print(f"Total number of Files and Directories in path {PATH}: {len(LIST_PATH)}")

    print(f"Total number of files in path {PATH}: {len(SEPARATE_LIST['file'])}")

    print(f"Total number of files in path {PATH}: {len(SEPARATE_LIST['directory'])}")

segregateCWD()

Let’s understand what each statement in the above code is doing.

import os –  Importing os module.
import json –  Importing json module.
PATH –  Store path where separation logic will work.
LIST_PATH –  List down all the files and directories in given PATH.
SEPARATE_LIST –  A dictionary to store all files and directories in list format.
DIR_PATHS –  Store absolute path of each file and directory under PATH.
def segregateCWD() –  Function where logic to separate files and directories is defined.
for path in DIR_PATHS –  Traverse each item in DIR_PATHS.
if os.path.isdir(path) –  Check if current item is directory or not.
SEPARATE_LIST[‘directory’].append(path) –  If current item is directory, append the item in dictionary  where key name is “directory”.
if os.path.isfile(path) –  Check if current item is Check if current item is file or not.
SEPARATE_LIST[‘file’].append(path) –  If current item is file, append the item in dictionary where key is “file”.
print(json.dumps(SEPARATE_LIST, indent=4, sort_keys=True)) –  Prints the SEPARATE_LIST output in json format on the console.
print(f”Total number of Files and Directories in path {PATH}: {len(LIST_PATH)}”) – Return and prints total number of files and directories under PATH.
print(f”Total number of files in path {PATH}: {len(SEPARATE_LIST[‘file’])}”) –  Return and prints total number of files under PATH.
print(f”Total number of files in path {PATH}: {len(SEPARATE_LIST[‘directory’])}”): – Return and prints total number of directories under PATH.

 

OUTPUT

[root@linuxnasa vehicle]# python3 vehicle.py
{
"directory": [
"/root/vehicle/car",
"/root/vehicle/bike",
"/root/vehicle/bus"
],
"file": [
"/root/vehicle/Readme.txt",
"/root/vehicle/file1.txt",
"/root/vehicle/file2.txt",
"/root/vehicle/file3.txt"
]
}
Total number of Files and Directories in path /root/vehicle: 7
Total number of files in path /root/vehicle: 4
Total number of files in path /root/vehicle: 3

 

Summary

This is  the simplest approach to segregate and the files and directories in Python. There are lot many other way to do the same job. Example, we can also use os.scansir() to do the segregation. We can also store the segregated files and directories to two different directories instead of lists.

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