Sorting directory contents

[Tim Williams]

On 20/02/07, Wolfgang Draxinger <wdraxinger at darkstargames.de> wrote:
> H folks,
>
> I got, hmm not really a problem, more a question of elegance:
>
> In a current project I have to read in some files in a given
> directory in chronological order, so that I can concatenate the
> contents in those files into a new one (it's XML and I have to
> concatenate some subelements, about 4 levels below the root
> element). It all works, but somehow I got the feeling, that my
> solution is not as elegant as it could be:
>
> src_file_paths = dict()
> for fname in os.listdir(sourcedir):
>         fpath = sourcedir+os.sep+fname
>         if not match_fname_pattern(fname): continue
>         src_file_paths[os.stat(fpath).st_mtime] = fpath
> for ftime in src_file_paths.keys().sort():
>         read_and_concatenate(src_file_paths[ftime])
>
> of course listdir and sorting could be done in a separate
> function, but I wonder if there was a more elegant approach.
>
> Wolfgang Draxinger
> --
> E-Mail address works, Jabber: hexarith at jabber.org, ICQ: 134682867

Are you running on windows?

>>> i,o,e = os.popen3("dir c:\windows /OD /A-D /B")
>>> [x.strip() for x in o.readlines() if 'a' in x ]

Gives a list of filenames (but not directories) in date order, that
match a pattern ('a' in x)

>>> i,o,e = os.popen3("dir c:\windows /O-D /A-D /B")
>>> [x.strip() for x in o.readlines() if 'a' in x]

Gives the same list but in reverse chronological order.

Something containing an approximation of my poor-writing style below
would do the job.
>>> i,o,e = os.popen3("dir c:\windows /OD /A-D /B")
>>> [os.path.join(a_path, x.strip()) for x in o.readlines() if
match_fname_pattern(x)]
['c:/windows/NeroDigital.ini', 'c:/windows/WindowsUpdate.log',
'c:/windows/setupapi.log', 'c:/windows/wiadebug.log',
'c:/windows/wiaservc.log' ....................................

c:\> Dir /?     will give you more help

HTH :)