How to ignore hidden files using os.listdir()?

Question

My python script executes an os.listdir(path) where the path is a queue containing archives that I need to treat one by one.

The problem is that I'm getting the list in an array and then I just do a simple array.pop(0). It was working fine until I put the project in subversion. Now I get the .svn folder in my array and of course it makes my application crash.

So here is my question: is there a function that ignores hidden files when executing an os.listdir() and if not what would be the best way?

Answer 1

You can write one yourself:

def listdir_nohidden(path):
    for f in os.listdir(path):
        if not f.startswith('.'):
            yield f

Or you can use a glob:

def listdir_nohidden(path):
    return glob.glob(os.path.join(path, '*'))

Either of these will ignore all filenames beginning with '.'.

Answer 2

This is an old question, but seems like it is missing the obvious answer of using list comprehension, so I'm adding it here for completeness:

[f for f in os.listdir(path) if not f.startswith('.')]

As a side note, the docs state listdir will return results in 'arbitrary order' but a common use case is to have them sorted alphabetically. If you want the directory contents alphabetically sorted without regards to capitalization, you can use:

sorted([f for f in os.listdir('./')], key=lambda f: f.lower())

Answer 3

On Windows, Linux and OS X:

if os.name == 'nt':
    import win32api, win32con


def folder_is_hidden(p):
    if os.name== 'nt':
        attribute = win32api.GetFileAttributes(p)
        return attribute & (win32con.FILE_ATTRIBUTE_HIDDEN | win32con.FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SYSTEM)
    else:
        return p.startswith('.') #linux-osx

Answer 4

Joshmaker has the right solution to your question.
How to ignore hidden files using os.listdir()?

In Python 3 however, it is recommended to use pathlib instead of os.

from pathlib import Path 
visible_files = [
    file for file in Path(".").iterdir() if not file.name.startswith(".")
]

Answer 5

glob:

>>> import glob
>>> glob.glob('*')

(glob claims to use listdir and fnmatch under the hood, but it also checks for a leading '.', not by using fnmatch.)

Answer 6

I think it is too much of work to go through all of the items in a loop. I would prefer something simpler like this:

lst = os.listdir(path)
if '.DS_Store' in lst:
    lst.remove('.DS_Store')

If the directory contains more than one hidden files, then this can help:

all_files = os.popen('ls -1').read()
lst = all_files.split('\n')

for platform independence as @Josh mentioned the glob works well:

import glob
glob.glob('*')

Answer 7

filenames = (f.name for f in os.scandir() if not f.name.startswith('.'))