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

[Gregory Ewing]

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.

-- 
Greg