How to use Glob() function to find files recursively in Python?

Glob is a general term used to define techniques to match specified patterns according to rules related to Unix shell. Linux and Unix systems and shells also support glob and also provide function glob() in system libraries.

In Python, the glob module is used to retrieve files/pathnames matching a specified pattern. The pattern rules of glob follow standard Unix path expansion rules. It is also predicted that according to benchmarks it is faster than other methods to match pathnames in directories. With glob, we can also use wildcards ("*, ?, [ranges]) apart from exact string search to make path retrieval more simple and convenient.

Note: This module comes built-in with Python, so there is no need to install it externally.

Example:

# Python program to demonstrate
# glob using different wildcards


import glob


print('Named explicitly:')
for name in glob.glob('/home/geeks/Desktop/gfg/data.txt'):
    print(name)

# Using '*' pattern
print('\nNamed with wildcard *:')
for name in glob.glob('/home/geeks/Desktop/gfg/*'):
    print(name)

# Using '?' pattern
print('\nNamed with wildcard ?:')
for name in glob.glob('/home/geeks/Desktop/gfg/data?.txt'):
    print(name)

# Using [0-9] pattern
print('\nNamed with wildcard ranges:')
for name in glob.glob('/home/geeks/Desktop/gfg/*[0-9].*'):
    print(name)

Output :

Using Glob() function to find files recursively

We can use the function glob.glob() or glob.iglob() directly from glob module to retrieve paths recursively from inside the directories/files and subdirectories/subfiles.

Syntax:

glob.glob(pathname, *, recursive=False)

glob.iglob(pathname, *, recursive=False)

Note: When recursive is set True “**” followed by path separator('./**/') will match any files or directories.

Example:

# Python program to find files
# recursively using Python


import glob


# Returns a list of names in list files.
print("Using glob.glob()")
files = glob.glob('/home/geeks/Desktop/gfg/**/*.txt',
                   recursive = True)
for file in files:
    print(file)


# It returns an iterator which will
# be printed simultaneously.
print("\nUsing glob.iglob()")
for filename in glob.iglob('/home/geeks/Desktop/gfg/**/*.txt',
                           recursive = True):
    print(filename)

Output :

For older versions of python:
The most simple method is to use os.walk() as it is specifically designed and optimized to allow recursive browsing of a directory tree. Or we can also use os.listdir() to get all the files in directory and subdirectories and then filter out.

Let us see it through an example-
Example:

# Python program to find files
# recursively using Python


import os

# Using os.walk()
for dirpath, dirs, files in os.walk('src'):
  for filename in files:
    fname = os.path.join(dirpath,filename)
    if fname.endswith('.c'):
      print(fname)

"""
Or
We can also use fnmatch.filter()
to filter out results.
"""
for dirpath, dirs, files in os.walk('src'):
  for filename in fnmatch.filter(files, '*.c'):
    print(os.path.join(dirpath, filename))

# Using os.listdir()
path = "src"
dir_list = os.listdir(path)
for filename in fnmatch.filter(dir_list,'*.c'):
  print(os.path.join(dirpath, filename))

Output :

 
./src/add.c
./src/subtract.c
./src/sub/mul.c
./src/sub/div.c

./src/add.c
./src/subtract.c
./src/sub/mul.c
./src/sub/div.c

./src/add.c
./src/subtract.c
./src/sub/mul.c
./src/sub/div.c