Getting a list of all subdirectories in the current directory

Question

Is there a way to return a list of all the subdirectories in the current directory in Python?

I know you can do this with files, but I need to get the list of directories instead.

Answer 1

Do you mean immediate subdirectories, or every directory right down the tree?

Either way, you could use os.walk to do this:

os.walk(directory)

will yield a tuple for each subdirectory. Ths first entry in the 3-tuple is a directory name, so

[x[0] for x in os.walk(directory)]

should give you all of the subdirectories, recursively.

Note that the second entry in the tuple is the list of child directories of the entry in the first position, so you could use this instead, but it's not likely to save you much.

However, you could use it just to give you the immediate child directories:

next(os.walk('.'))[1]

Or see the other solutions already posted, using os.listdir and os.path.isdir, including those at "How to get all of the immediate subdirectories in Python".

Answer 2

import os

d = '.'
[os.path.join(d, o) for o in os.listdir(d) 
                    if os.path.isdir(os.path.join(d,o))]

Answer 3

You could just use glob.glob

from glob import glob
glob("/path/to/directory/*/")

Don't forget the trailing / after the *.

Answer 4

Much nicer than the above, because you don't need several os.path.join() and you will get the full path directly (if you wish), you can do this in Python 3.5+

subfolders = [f.path for f in os.scandir(folder) if f.is_dir() ]    

This will give the complete path to the subdirectory. If you only want the name of the subdirectory use f.name instead of f.path

https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#os.scandir

Answer 5

If you need a recursive solution that will find all the subdirectories in the subdirectories, use walk as proposed before.

If you only need the current directory's child directories, combine os.listdir with os.path.isdir

Answer 6

I prefer using filter (https://docs.python.org/2/library/functions.html#filter), but this is just a matter of taste.

d='.'
filter(lambda x: os.path.isdir(os.path.join(d, x)), os.listdir(d))

Answer 7

Implemented this using python-os-walk. (http://www.pythonforbeginners.com/code-snippets-source-code/python-os-walk/)

import os

print("root prints out directories only from what you specified")
print("dirs prints out sub-directories from root")
print("files prints out all files from root and directories")
print("*" * 20)

for root, dirs, files in os.walk("/var/log"):
    print(root)
    print(dirs)
    print(files)

Answer 8

You can get the list of subdirectories (and files) in Python 2.7 using os.listdir(path)

import os
os.listdir(path)  # list of subdirectories and files

Answer 9

Listing Out only directories

print("\nWe are listing out only the directories in current directory -")
directories_in_curdir = filter(os.path.isdir, os.listdir(os.curdir))
print(directories_in_curdir)

Listing Out only files in current directory

files = filter(os.path.isfile, os.listdir(os.curdir))
print("\nThe following are the list of all files in the current directory -")
print(files)

Answer 10

Since I stumbled upon this problem using Python 3.4 and Windows UNC paths, here's a variant for this environment:

from pathlib import WindowsPath

def SubDirPath (d):
    return [f for f in d.iterdir() if f.is_dir()]

subdirs = SubDirPath(WindowsPath(r'\\file01.acme.local\home$'))
print(subdirs)

Pathlib is new in Python 3.4 and makes working with paths under different OSes much easier: https://docs.python.org/3.4/library/pathlib.html

Answer 11

Although this question is answered a long time ago. I want to recommend to use the pathlib module since this is a robust way to work on Windows and Unix OS.

So to get all paths in a specific directory including subdirectories:

from pathlib import Path
paths = list(Path('myhomefolder', 'folder').glob('**/*.txt'))

# all sorts of operations
file = paths[0]
file.name
file.stem
file.parent
file.suffix

etc.

Answer 12

Thanks for the tips, guys. I ran into an issue with softlinks (infinite recursion) being returned as dirs. Softlinks? We don't want no stinkin' soft links! So...

This rendered just the dirs, not softlinks:

>>> import os
>>> inf = os.walk('.')
>>> [x[0] for x in inf]
['.', './iamadir']

Answer 13

Python 3.4 introduced the pathlib module into the standard library, which provides an object oriented approach to handle filesystem paths:

from pathlib import Path

p = Path('./')

# List comprehension
[f for f in p.iterdir() if f.is_dir()]

# The trailing slash to glob indicated directories
# This will also include the current directory '.'
list(p.glob('**/'))

Pathlib is also available on Python 2.7 via the pathlib2 module on PyPi.

Answer 14

Building upon Eli Bendersky's solution, use the following example:

import os
test_directory = <your_directory>
for child in os.listdir(test_directory):
    test_path = os.path.join(test_directory, child)
    if os.path.isdir(test_path):
        print test_path
        # Do stuff to the directory "test_path"

where <your_directory> is the path to the directory you want to traverse.

Answer 15

Here are a couple of simple functions based on @Blair Conrad's example -

import os

def get_subdirs(dir):
    "Get a list of immediate subdirectories"
    return next(os.walk(dir))[1]

def get_subfiles(dir):
    "Get a list of immediate subfiles"
    return next(os.walk(dir))[2]

Answer 16

With full path and accounting for path being ., .., \\, ..\\..\\subfolder, etc:

import os, pprint
pprint.pprint([os.path.join(os.path.abspath(path), x[0]) \
    for x in os.walk(os.path.abspath(path))])

Answer 17

This answer didn't seem to exist already.

directories = [ x for x in os.listdir('.') if os.path.isdir(x) ]

Answer 18

Copy paste friendly in ipython:

import os
d='.'
folders = list(filter(lambda x: os.path.isdir(os.path.join(d, x)), os.listdir(d)))

Output from print(folders):

['folderA', 'folderB']

Answer 19

I've had a similar question recently, and I found out that the best answer for python 3.6 (as user havlock added) is to use os.scandir. Since it seems there is no solution using it, I'll add my own. First, a non-recursive solution that lists only the subdirectories directly under the root directory.

def get_dirlist(rootdir):

    dirlist = []

    with os.scandir(rootdir) as rit:
        for entry in rit:
            if not entry.name.startswith('.') and entry.is_dir():
                dirlist.append(entry.path)

    dirlist.sort() # Optional, in case you want sorted directory names
    return dirlist

The recursive version would look like this:

def get_dirlist(rootdir):

    dirlist = []

    with os.scandir(rootdir) as rit:
        for entry in rit:
            if not entry.name.startswith('.') and entry.is_dir():
                dirlist.append(entry.path)
                dirlist += get_dirlist(entry.path)

    dirlist.sort() # Optional, in case you want sorted directory names
    return dirlist

keep in mind that entry.path wields the absolute path to the subdirectory. In case you only need the folder name, you can use entry.name instead. Refer to os.DirEntry for additional details about the entry object.

Answer 20

use a filter function os.path.isdir over os.listdir() something like this filter(os.path.isdir,[os.path.join(os.path.abspath('PATH'),p) for p in os.listdir('PATH/')])

Answer 21

This will list all subdirectories right down the file tree.

import pathlib


def list_dir(dir):
    path = pathlib.Path(dir)
    dir = []
    try:
        for item in path.iterdir():
            if item.is_dir():
                dir.append(item)
                dir = dir + list_dir(item)
        return dir
    except FileNotFoundError:
        print('Invalid directory')

pathlib is new in version 3.4

Answer 22

This function, with a given parent directory iterates over all its directories recursively and prints all the filenames which it founds inside. Too useful.

import os

def printDirectoryFiles(directory):
   for filename in os.listdir(directory):  
        full_path=os.path.join(directory, filename)
        if not os.path.isdir(full_path): 
            print( full_path + "\n")


def checkFolders(directory):

    dir_list = next(os.walk(directory))[1]

    #print(dir_list)

    for dir in dir_list:           
        print(dir)
        checkFolders(directory +"/"+ dir) 

    printDirectoryFiles(directory)       

main_dir="C:/Users/S0082448/Desktop/carpeta1"

checkFolders(main_dir)


input("Press enter to exit ;")

Answer 23

Function to return a List of all subdirectories within a given file path. Will search through the entire file tree.

import os

def get_sub_directory_paths(start_directory, sub_directories):
    """
    This method iterates through all subdirectory paths of a given 
    directory to collect all directory paths.

    :param start_directory: The starting directory path.
    :param sub_directories: A List that all subdirectory paths will be 
        stored to.
    :return: A List of all sub-directory paths.
    """

    for item in os.listdir(start_directory):
        full_path = os.path.join(start_directory, item)

        if os.path.isdir(full_path):
            sub_directories.append(full_path)

            # Recursive call to search through all subdirectories.
            get_sub_directory_paths(full_path, sub_directories)

return sub_directories

Answer 24

If you want just the top list folder, please use listdir as walk take too much time.