Find a file in python

Question

I have a file that may be in a different place on each user's machine. How do I implement a search for the file? I need to figure out a way that I can pass the file's name and the directory tree to search in. Can anyone help me with that?

Answer 1

you can use os.walk in the following way:

import os

def find(name, path):
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(path):
        if name in files:
            return os.path.join(root, name)
 

And this will find all matches:

def find_all(name, path):
    result = []
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(path):
        if name in files:
            result.append(os.path.join(root, name))
    return result
 

And this will match a pattern:

import os, fnmatch
def find(pattern, path):
    result = []
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(path):
        for name in files:
            if fnmatch.fnmatch(name, pattern):
                result.append(os.path.join(root, name))
    return result

find('*.txt', '/path/to/dir')