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opening and reading all the files in a directory in python - python beginner

I'd like to read the contents of every file in a folder/directory and then print them at the end (I eventually want to pick out bits and pieces from the individual files and put them in a separate document)
So far I have this code
import os
path = 'results/'
fileList = os.listdir(path)
for i in fileList:
file = open(os.path.join('results/'+ i), 'r')
allLines = file.readlines()
print(allLines)
at the end I dont get any errors but it only prints the contents of the last file in my folder in a series of strings and I want to make sure its reading every file so I can then access the data I want from each file. I've looked online and I cant find where I'm going wrong. Is there any way of making sure the loop is iterating over all my files and reading all of them?
also i get the same result when I use
file = open(os.path.join('results/',i), 'r')
in the 5th line
Please help I'm so lost
Thanks!!

Separate the different functions of the thing you want to do.
Use generators wherever possible. Especially if there are a lot of files or large files
Imports
from pathlib import Path
import sys
Deciding which files to process:
source_dir = Path('results/')
files = source_dir.iterdir()
[Optional] Filter files
For example, if you only need files with extension .ext
files = source_dir.glob('*.ext')
Process files
def process_files(files):
for file in files:
with file.open('r') as file_handle :
for line in file_handle:
# do your thing
yield line
Save the lines you want to keep
def save_lines(lines, output_file=sys.std_out):
for line in lines:
output_file.write(line)

you forgot indentation at this line allLines = file.readlines()
and maybe you can try that :
import os
allLines = []
path = 'results/'
fileList = os.listdir(path)
for file in fileList:
file = open(os.path.join('results/'+ i), 'r')
allLines.append(file.read())
print(allLines)

You forgot to indent this line allLines.append(file.read()).
Because it was outside the loop, it only appended the file variable to the list after the for loop was finished. So it only appended the last value of the file variable that remained after the loop. Also, you should not use readlines() in this way. Just use read() instead;
import os
allLines = []
path = 'results/'
fileList = os.listdir(path)
for file in fileList:
file = open(os.path.join('results/'+ i), 'r')
allLines.append(file.read())
print(allLines)

This also creates a file containing all the files you wanted to print.
rootdir= your folder, like 'C:\\Users\\you\\folder\\'
import os
f = open('final_file.txt', 'a')
for root, dirs, files in os.walk(rootdir):
for filename in files:
data = open(full_name).read()
f.write(data + "\n")
f.close()
This is a similar case, with more features: Copying selected lines from files in different directories to another file

how can i use fileinput to edit multiple files?

I am using os.walk in python 2.7 to open multiple files, then, add all lines of interest of those files to a list. Later I'd want to edit those lines with fileinput and close it. How can I achieve this? Using the code below is how I'm opening the files:
import os
import fnmatch
import fileinput
lines = []
def openFiles():
for root, dirs, files in os.walk('/home/test1/'):
for lists in fnmatch.filter(files, "*.txt"):
filepath = os.path.join(root, lists)
print filepath
with open(filepath, "r") as sources:#opens 8 files and read their lines
#edit = fileinput.input(filepath, inplace=1)
for line in sources:
if line.startswith('xe') :
lines.append(line)
Then later, for each lines that start with xe, I'd like to add a # in front of it then close that file. I'd like to do that in a different function.

Here's the I way I do it, adding to your code:
import os
import fnmatch
import fileinput
def openFiles(dir):
filePaths = []
for root, dirs, files in os.walk(dir):
for textFile in fnmatch.filter(files, "*.txt"):
filepath = os.path.join(root, textFile)
filePaths.append(filepath)
return filePaths
def prefixLines(filepaths, chartoPrefix, prefixWith):
res = ''
for filepath in filepaths:
# Read file
with open(filepath, 'r') as f:
for line in f:
if line.startswith(chartoPrefix):
res += prefixWith + line
else:
res += line
# Write to file
with open(filepath, 'w') as f:
f.write(res)
res = '' # Rest res
prefixLines(openFiles(r'/home/test1/'), 'xe', '#')
prefixLines suffers from many shortcomings:
Because we read all the lines of files and store them in res, we
may ran out of memory for large files.
If somehow the programmer forgot to indent res = '' in the
right block or if res was completely omitted and the code ran on
actual files that the user needs, you'll end up writing the contents
of the previous read file to the next file and the last
file will have the contents of all the read files. That's why you
have use this code in a testing environment or use it cautiously.
This code only serves to demonstrate how you could achieve your desired effects, prefixing file lines that starts with a string with another string. Therefore, a slight improvement of this code is recommended. For example, instead of reading all the contents of the file and storing them at res you could simply save the line number that needs to be prefixed and thus eliminating the need to load all the data into memory. enumerate could also be helpful to return the file number, it returns an iterable in 2.7. By obviating res not only do we save memory, but also eliminate the shortcoming in bullet 2.

I ended up doing it this way. But I'm using classes in my main code so It's split into 2 functions instead of one. In my main code, I used a list to hold all the file paths and use fileinput to open each filepaths from the list this way for line in fileinput.FileInput(pathlist, inplace=1): do something. I do thank #direprobs for her answer, as she shed some light on how I'm supposed to do this.
import fnmatch
import fileinput
import os
import sys
def openFiles():
for dirpath, dirs, files in os.walk('/home/test1/'):
for filename in fnmatch.filter(files, "*.txt"):
filepaths = os.path.join(dirpath, filename)
for line in fileinput.FileInput(filepaths, inplace=1):
if line.startswith("xe"):
add = "# {}".format(line)
line = line.replace(line, add)
sys.stdout.write(line)
fileinput.close()
openFiles()

how can i view the first line of every file in my directory using python

I want to view the first line of each file in the directory in hex
I can use a loop to do it for all of the files but i need a way to view the first few bytes of a file
any ideas ?

pushpendra chauhan's answer is correct, but why should we use a for loop when it's not necessary (we are only looping once every time!)? (I cannot comment as I don't have sufficient reputation).
The other thing is, this will raise an IOError if you have any subdirectories in your path. So I added a line using os.path to see if the current 'file' is actually a file before attempting to open it.
import os
def read_first_line(filename):
with open(filename) as f:
print f.readline()
for filename in os.listdir(os.getcwd()):
if os.path.isfile(filename): read_first_line(filename)

This will work for you : -
from os import listdir
from os.path import isfile, join
onlyfiles = [f for f in listdir('folderPath') if isfile(join('folderPath', f))]
for file in onlyfiles:
with open(join('folderPath', file), 'r') as f:
first_line = f.readline()
print first_line

First you can read all files name in the directory
for filename in os.listdir(os.getcwd()):
and then you can read first line of each file
Here is the full code
import os
def readFile(filename):
with open(filename) as f:
for line in f:
print line
break
for filename in os.listdir(os.getcwd()):
readFile(filename)

Python file-IO and zipfile. Trying to loop through all the files in a folder and then loop through the texts in respective file using Python

Trying to extract all the zip files and giving the same name to the folder where all the files are gonna be.
Looping through all the files in the folder and then looping through the lines within those files to write on a different text file.
This is my code so far:
#!usr/bin/env python3
import glob
import os
import zipfile
zip_files = glob.glob('*.zip')
for zip_filename in zip_files:
dir_name = os.path.splitext(zip_filename)[0]
os.mkdir(dir_name)
zip_handler = zipfile.ZipFile(zip_filename, "r")
zip_handler.extractall(dir_name)
path = dir_name
fOut = open("Output.txt", "w")
for filename in os.listdir(path):
for line in filename.read().splitlines():
print(line)
fOut.write(line + "\n")
fOut.close()
This is the error that I encounter:
for line in filename.read().splitlines():
AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'read'

You need to open the file and also join the path to the file, also using splitlines and then adding a newline to each line is a bit redundant:
path = dir_name
with open("Output.txt", "w") as fOut:
for filename in os.listdir(path):
# join filename to path to avoid file not being found
with open(os.path.join(path, filename)):
for line in filename:
fOut.write(line)
You should always use with to open your files as it will close them automatically. If the files are not large you can simply fOut.write(f.read()) and remove the loop.
You also set path = dir_name which means path will be set to whatever the last value of dir_name was in your first loop which may or may not be what you want. You can also use iglob to avoid creating a full list zip_files = glob.iglob('*.zip').

How to read and write multiple files?

I want to write a program for this: In a folder I have n number of files; first read one file and perform some operation then store result in a separate file. Then read 2nd file, perform operation again and save result in new 2nd file. Do the same procedure for n number of files. The program reads all files one by one and stores results of each file separately. Please give examples how I can do it.

I think what you miss is how to retrieve all the files in that directory.
To do so, use the glob module.
Here is an example which will duplicate all the files with extension *.txt to files with extension *.out
import glob
list_of_files = glob.glob('./*.txt') # create the list of file
for file_name in list_of_files:
FI = open(file_name, 'r')
FO = open(file_name.replace('txt', 'out'), 'w')
for line in FI:
FO.write(line)
FI.close()
FO.close()

import sys
# argv is your commandline arguments, argv[0] is your program name, so skip it
for n in sys.argv[1:]:
print(n) #print out the filename we are currently processing
input = open(n, "r")
output = open(n + ".out", "w")
# do some processing
input.close()
output.close()
Then call it like:
./foo.py bar.txt baz.txt

You may find the fileinput module useful. It is designed for exactly this problem.

I've just learned of the os.walk() command recently, and it may help you here.
It allows you to walk down a directory tree structure.
import os
OUTPUT_DIR = 'C:\\RESULTS'
for path, dirs, files in os.walk('.'):
for file in files:
read_f = open(os.join(path,file),'r')
write_f = open(os.path.join(OUTPUT_DIR,file))
# Do stuff

Combined answer incorporating directory or specific list of filenames arguments:
import sys
import os.path
import glob
def processFile(filename):
fileHandle = open(filename, "r")
for line in fileHandle:
# do some processing
pass
fileHandle.close()
def outputResults(filename):
output_filemask = "out"
fileHandle = open("%s.%s" % (filename, output_filemask), "w")
# do some processing
fileHandle.write('processed\n')
fileHandle.close()
def processFiles(args):
input_filemask = "log"
directory = args[1]
if os.path.isdir(directory):
print "processing a directory"
list_of_files = glob.glob('%s/*.%s' % (directory, input_filemask))
else:
print "processing a list of files"
list_of_files = sys.argv[1:]
for file_name in list_of_files:
print file_name
processFile(file_name)
outputResults(file_name)
if __name__ == '__main__':
if (len(sys.argv) > 1):
processFiles(sys.argv)
else:
print 'usage message'

from pylab import *
import csv
import os
import glob
import re
x=[]
y=[]
f=open("one.txt",'w')
for infile in glob.glob(('*.csv')):
# print "" +infile
csv23=csv2rec(""+infile,'rb',delimiter=',')
for line in csv23:
x.append(line[1])
# print len(x)
for i in range(3000,8000):
y.append(x[i])
print ""+infile,"\t",mean(y)
print >>f,""+infile,"\t\t",mean(y)
del y[:len(y)]
del x[:len(x)]

I know I saw this double with open() somewhere but couldn't remember where. So I built a small example in case someone needs.
""" A module to clean code(js, py, json or whatever) files saved as .txt files to
be used in HTML code blocks. """
from os import listdir
from os.path import abspath, dirname, splitext
from re import sub, MULTILINE
def cleanForHTML():
""" This function will search a directory text files to be edited. """
## define some regex for our search and replace. We are looking for <, > and &
## To replaced with &ls;, > and &. We might want to replace proper whitespace
## chars to as well? (r'\t', ' ') and (f'\n', '<br>')
search_ = ((r'(<)', '<'), (r'(>)', '>'), (r'(&)', '&'))
## Read and loop our file location. Our location is the same one that our python file is in.
for loc in listdir(abspath(dirname(__file__))):
## Here we split our filename into it's parts ('fileName', '.txt')
name = splitext(loc)
if name[1] == '.txt':
## we found our .txt file so we can start file operations.
with open(loc, 'r') as file_1, open(f'{name[0]}(fixed){name[1]}', 'w') as file_2:
## read our first file
retFile = file_1.read()
## find and replace some text.
for find_ in search_:
retFile = sub(find_[0], find_[1], retFile, 0, MULTILINE)
## finally we can write to our newly created text file.
file_2.write(retFile)

This thing also works for reading multiple files, my file name is fedaralist_1.txt and federalist_2.txt and like this, I have 84 files till fedaralist_84.txt
And I'm reading the files as f.
for file in filename:
with open(f'federalist_{file}.txt','r') as f:
f.read()