find_files: Find files based on substring matches

A function that finds files in a given directory based on substring matches and returns a list of the file names found.

from mlxtend.file_io import find_files

Overview

This function finds files based on substring search. This is especially useful if we want to find specific files in a directory tree and return their absolute paths for further processing in Python.

References

  • -

Given the following directory and file structure

dir_1/
    file_1.log
    file_2.log
    file_3.log
dir_2/
    file_1.csv
    file_2.csv
    file_3.csv
dir_3/
    file_1.txt
    file_2.txt
    file_3.txt

we can use find_files to return the paths to all files that contain the substring _2 as follows: 

from mlxtend.file_io import find_files

find_files(substring='_2', path='./data_find_filegroups/', recursive=True)

['./data_find_filegroups/dir_1/file_2.log',
 './data_find_filegroups/dir_2/file_2.csv',
 './data_find_filegroups/dir_3/file_2.txt']

API

find_files(substring, path, recursive=False, check_ext=None, ignore_invisible=True, ignore_substring=None)

Find files in a directory based on substring matching.

Parameters

  • substring : str

    Substring of the file to be matched.

  • path : str

    Path where to look.

  • recursive : bool

    If true, searches subdirectories recursively.

  • check_ext : str

    If string (e.g., '.txt'), only returns files that match the specified file extension.

  • ignore_invisible : bool

    If True, ignores invisible files (i.e., files starting with a period).

  • ignore_substring : str

    Ignores files that contain the specified substring.

Returns

  • results : list

    List of the matched files.

Examples

For usage examples, please see https://rasbt.github.io/mlxtend/user_guide/file_io/find_files/