In this article, we will walk you through a step-by-step guide on how to write a Python program to find all files with .txt extension present inside a directory.
At some point, you may need to search for all the files in a specific directory with a certain file extension. For instance, you might want to find all the files with a .txt extension present in a directory. While doing this manually is possible, it can be a tedious and time-consuming process, especially if you have a large number of files.
Luckily, Python provides a straightforward and efficient way to find all files with a specific extension within a directory.
Step 1: Import the Necessary Libraries
Before we begin writing our Python program, we need to import the necessary libraries. For this task, we only need the os
library, which provides a way to interact with the file system in Python.
import os
Step 2: Define the Directory Path
Once we have imported the os
library, the next step is to define the directory path where we want to search for files. In this case, we will search for all files with a .txt extension present in the current directory. To do this, we can use the os.getcwd()
method, which returns the current working directory.
dir_path = os.getcwd()
Alternatively, we can also specify a different directory path. For example, to search for all .txt files present in a directory called my_folder
located in the root of our system, we can use the following code:
dir_path = '/my_folder'
Step 3: Find all Files with .txt Extension
Now that we have defined the directory path, we can use the os.listdir()
method to get a list of all the files and directories present in the specified directory. Once we have this list, we can loop through it and use the os.path.splitext()
method to check if the file has a .txt extension.
txt_files = [f for f in os.listdir(dir_path) if os.path.splitext(f)[1] == '.txt']
The above code will return a list of all files with a .txt extension present in the specified directory.
Step 4: Display the List of Files
Finally, we can display the list of all files with a .txt extension present in the directory using the following code:
for file in txt_files:
print(file)
The above code will return a list of all files with a .txt extension present in the specified directory.
Writing a Python program to find all files with a specific extension within a directory is a simple and efficient process. By following the steps outlined above, you can quickly and easily find all files with a .txt extension present in a directory using Python.
Thanks for reading. Happy coding!