I'm trying to get 4 files from a directory with an specific extension each one

Question

files = [
    f for f in listdir(input_path)
    if path.isfile(path.join(input_path, f))
]
if files:
    for file in files:
        if file.endswith(".xml"):
            xml_filename = input_path + file
        elif file.endswith(".csv"):
            csv_filename = input_path + file
        elif file.endswith(".osgb"):
            osgb_filename = input_path + file
        elif file.endswith(".xodr"):
            xodr_filename = input_path + file

I'm trying to get 4 files from a directory with an specific extension each one but my solution looks kinda ugly you smart guys may have a clever solution ;D

Is it important that the results end up as variables? Would a dict of `{"csv":the_csv_file, ...}` work? That would make cleaner code. — tdelaney, Oct 15 '21 at 01:23
Related: [How do I create variable variables?](/q/1373164/4518341), [Replacements for switch statement in Python?](/q/60208/4518341) (e.g. `match file.rsplit('.', 1)[1]: case 'xml': ...`) — wjandrea, Oct 15 '21 at 02:51
BTW, welcome to Stack Overflow! Check out the [tour], and [ask] if you want tips. — wjandrea, Oct 15 '21 at 02:55

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 15 '21 at 01:34

You can reduce code count if you move your result into a collection that can be filled in a loop. With individual variables, you need code per variable for the assignment. Using a dictionary and the standard pathlib module, your code could be

from pathlib import Path
files = {path.suffix[1:]:path for path in Path(input_path).iterdir()
    if path.suffix in {".csv", ".xml", ".osgb", ".xodr"}}

Now xml_filename is files["xml"].

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 15 '21 at 01:20

use glob.glob()

from glob import glob
import os

xml_filename = glob(os.path.join(input_path, '*.xml'))[0]
csv_filename = glob(os.path.join(input_path, '*.csv'))[0]
osgb_filename = glob(os.path.join(input_path, '*.osgb'))[0]
xodr_filename = glob(os.path.join(input_path, '*.xodr'))[0]

Note that this code assumes that there's at least one of each file type in the directory. You can use try/except to catch the IndexError if glob() doesn't return any matches.

I'm trying to get 4 files from a directory with an specific extension each one

2 Answers2