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Working on a school project... I have a python list object (obtained from a text file) that contains an entire directory listing(about 400K items). Is there a module to organize this list or text file into a file tree structure automatically?

For example, the root starts the list "/". followed by the first folder in it, all the way out to the last file in the path "/folder1/sub-folder_last/lastfile.txt

This goes all the way to the very last item "/last_folder_in_root" out to the very last sub folder in that "/last_folder_in_root/last_sub_folder/last_file.txt"

I have been searching for a good start point but the ambiguity in searching gets me nothing but os, os walk items. Hoping there is already something out there that will run through this and separate sub items with a tab or something similar.

end output would be something similar to:

/
    /first_folder
        /first_sub_folder
            /file.txt
    /second_folder
    /last_folder
        /last_sub_fodler
             /last_file.txt

I searched through several libraries but was unable to find one that supported this. This does not involve os.walk, it's not for the local file system. It's from a txt file, or list.

Basically trying to find something similar to the os.walk output, but bring the information in from a list or file, rather than the local system. Any ideas or direction for this?

Laylor010
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  • Do the paths in the list end with a`/`? – Edo Akse May 07 '19 at 08:34
  • Possible duplicate of [List directory tree structure in python?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9727673/list-directory-tree-structure-in-python) – Georgy May 07 '19 at 10:02
  • @Georgy, not a dupe as the input here is a textfile, not an actual filesystem – Edo Akse May 07 '19 at 10:46
  • @EdoAkse What do you mean by "actual filesystem"? – Georgy May 07 '19 at 10:54
  • In any case, the answer to the OP's question is no, there is no built-in functionality in Python to represent a list of filepaths in a tree-like format. So, they have to write some code. – Georgy May 07 '19 at 10:59
  • The methods described in the proposed dupe deal with a real filesystem, so you can use `os`, but this case deals with input from a text file, which means you can't user fe. `os.walk()` – Edo Akse May 07 '19 at 11:03
  • The paths are listed in a basic directory structure, just one full path per line starting at root and ending 400K+ lines later at the very last file in the filesystem. The paths all start with the root / but have various folder sub-paths ending with either a new directory, or a file. – Laylor010 May 07 '19 at 12:08

1 Answers1

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you can solve this with some logic

with open('filename.txt') as in_file:
    for line in in_file.readlines():
        as_list = line.split('/')
        # special case for the root
        if len(as_list) == 2 and as_list[0] == '' and as_list[-1] == '\n':
            indent = 0
        else:
            indent = (len(as_list) - 1) * 4 + len(as_list[-1]) + 1
        output = '/{}'.format(as_list[-1].strip('\n'))
        print(output.rjust(indent))
Edo Akse
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  • This worked very well, with the exact output I had in mind. Was making numerous failed attempts at it though. Thank you for adding this in. – Laylor010 May 07 '19 at 13:14