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Re: Test for an empty directory that could be very large if it is not empty?

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In article <c4gjqvF8cmiU1@mid.individual.net>,
 Gregory Ewing <greg.ewing@canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:

> Virgil Stokes wrote:
> > How can I 
> > determine if the directory is empty WITHOUT the generation of a list of 
> > the file names
> 
> Which platform?
> 
> On Windows, I have no idea.
> 
> On Unix you can't really do this properly without access
> to opendir() and readdir(), which Python doesn't currently
> wrap.
> 
> Will the empty directories be newly created, or could they
> be ones that *used* to contain 200000 files that have since
> been deleted?
> 
> If they're new or nearly new, you could probably tell from
> looking at the size reported by stat() on the directory.
> The difference between a fresh empty directory and one with
> 200000 files in it should be fairly obvious.
> 
> A viable strategy might be: If the directory is very large,
> assume it's not empty. If it's smallish, list its contents
> to find out for sure.

I wonder if glob.iglob('*') might help here?

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Thread

Test for an empty directory that could be very large if it is not empty? Virgil Stokes <vs@it.uu.se> - 2014-08-06 23:46 +0200
  Re: Test for an empty directory that could be very large if it is not   empty? Gregory Ewing <greg.ewing@canterbury.ac.nz> - 2014-08-07 18:14 +1200
    Re: Test for an empty directory that could be very large if it is not   empty? Cameron Simpson <cs@zip.com.au> - 2014-08-07 17:08 +1000
    Re: Test for an empty directory that could be very large if it is not   empty? Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-08-07 07:54 -0400
      Re: Test for an empty directory that could be very large if it is not empty? Peter Otten <__peter__@web.de> - 2014-08-07 14:06 +0200
      Re: Test for an empty directory that could be very large if it is not empty? Tim Chase <python.list@tim.thechases.com> - 2014-08-07 07:05 -0500
        Re: Test for an empty directory that could be very large if it is not empty? Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-08-07 08:19 -0400
          Re: Test for an empty directory that could be very large if it is not empty? Tim Chase <python.list@tim.thechases.com> - 2014-08-07 12:37 -0500
            Re: Test for an empty directory that could be very large if it is not empty? Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-08-07 21:10 -0400
  Re: Test for an empty directory that could be very large if it is not empty? John Gordon <gordon@panix.com> - 2014-08-07 20:15 +0000

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