reading directory entries one by one

[Michael P. Soulier]

On Wed, 22 May 2002 10:21:47 GMT, Michael Hudson <mwh at python.net> wrote:
> 
> How big are your directories?  I'd be surprised to find this was ever
> an issue, but...

    I have a few with 4000+ files in them. There's enough memory on the box to
easily handle this, but it's still not efficient.

> Don't think so.  Wouldn't be that hard, though you'd have to write
> some C.  Hmm, might be a cool application of iterators.
> 
> Hmm, thinking aloud, would it be possible/nice to be able to do:
> 
> for entry in dir("/"):
>     if entry.isdir():
>        print "skipping", entry.basename
>     elif entry.islink():
>        print entry.readlink()
>     else:
>        print entry.basename, len(entry.open('r').read())

    Perhaps an xlistdir (lazy version) is in order. Maybe I'll go play with
this, to teach myself how to extend python.

>   ... Windows proponents tell you that it will solve things that
>   your Unix system people keep telling you are hard.  The Unix 
>   people are right: they are hard, and Windows does not solve 
>   them, ...                            -- Tim Bradshaw, comp.lang.lisp

    :) I like your .sig. Personally the direction that some of python is
taking towards windows-lovers bothers me, but it's still a great language. I
mean, c'mon, .ini file format for the configparser?

<side_rant>
And who created file() as an alias for open()? I really prefer to not get too
far away from the Unix API in the naming of functions. I have to write C too,
and it makes things far easier to find the equivalent function in python that
I'm looking for when it has the same name.
</side_rant>

    Ah, better. :)

    Mike

-- 
Michael P. Soulier, QX41, SKY  Tel: 613-765-4699 (ESN: 39-54699)
Optical Networks, Nortel Networks, SDE Pegasus
"...the word HACK is used as a verb to indicate a massive amount
of nerd-like effort."  -Harley Hahn, A Student's Guide to Unix