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Re: Iterating over files of a huge directory

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On 17 December 2012 15:28, Gilles Lenfant <gilles.lenfant@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have googled but did not find an efficient solution to my problem. My customer provides a directory with a huuuuge list of files (flat, potentially 100000+) and I cannot reasonably use os.listdir(this_path) unless creating a big memory footprint.
>
> So I'm looking for an iterator that yields the file names of a directory and does not make a giant list of what's in.
>
> i.e :
>
> for filename in enumerate_files(some_directory):
>     # My cooking...

In the last couple of months there has been a lot of discussion (on
python-list or python-dev - not sure) about creating a library to more
efficiently iterate over the files in a directory. The result so far
is this library on github:
https://github.com/benhoyt/betterwalk

It says there that
"""
Somewhat relatedly, many people have also asked for a version of
os.listdir() that yields filenames as it iterates instead of returning
them as one big list.

So as well as a faster walk(), BetterWalk adds iterdir_stat() and
iterdir(). They're pretty easy to use, but see below for the full API
docs.
"""

Does that code work for you? If so, I imagine the author would be
interested to get some feedback on how well it works.

Alternatively, perhaps consider calling an external utility.


Oscar

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Thread

Iterating over files of a huge directory Gilles Lenfant <gilles.lenfant@gmail.com> - 2012-12-17 07:28 -0800
  Re: Iterating over files of a huge directory Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2012-12-18 02:41 +1100
    Re: Iterating over files of a huge directory Paul Rudin <paul.nospam@rudin.co.uk> - 2012-12-17 17:27 +0000
      Re: Iterating over files of a huge directory MRAB <python@mrabarnett.plus.com> - 2012-12-17 18:29 +0000
      Re: Iterating over files of a huge directory Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2012-12-18 08:10 +1100
  Re: Iterating over files of a huge directory Tim Golden <mail@timgolden.me.uk> - 2012-12-17 15:48 +0000
  Re: Iterating over files of a huge directory Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j.benjamin@gmail.com> - 2012-12-17 15:52 +0000
    Re: Iterating over files of a huge directory Gilles Lenfant <gilles.lenfant@gmail.com> - 2012-12-17 08:06 -0800
    Re: Iterating over files of a huge directory Gilles Lenfant <gilles.lenfant@gmail.com> - 2012-12-17 08:06 -0800
  Re: Iterating over files of a huge directory marduk <marduk@python.net> - 2012-12-17 10:50 -0500
  Re: Re: Iterating over files of a huge directory Evan Driscoll <driscoll@cs.wisc.edu> - 2012-12-17 12:40 -0600
  Re: Re: Iterating over files of a huge directory Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j.benjamin@gmail.com> - 2012-12-17 19:50 +0000
  Re: Iterating over files of a huge directory Evan Driscoll <driscoll@cs.wisc.edu> - 2012-12-17 14:09 -0600
  Re: Iterating over files of a huge directory Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2012-12-17 16:27 -0500

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