This recipe demonstrates a simple text file searching program. The code asks for a directory to search (with its subdirectories) and the text that needs to be found in the contained files. This is just a simple starting program demonstrating how to access a computer's file system and accomplish useful work at the same time.
Python, 46 lines
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Copy to clipboard1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 | import os
def main():
try:
directory = get_directory()
text = get_text()
results = do_search(directory, text)
finish(results)
except:
pass
def get_directory():
while True:
try:
directory = raw_input('Directory: ')
assert os.path.isdir(directory)
return directory
except AssertionError:
print 'You must enter a directory.'
def get_text():
while True:
try:
text = raw_input('Text: ').lower()
assert text
return text
except AssertionError:
print 'You must enter some text.'
def do_search(directory, text):
results = list()
for dirpath, dirnames, filenames in os.walk(directory):
for name in filenames:
full_path = os.path.join(dirpath, name)
if text in file(full_path).read().lower():
results.append(full_path)
return results
def finish(results):
print
for filename in results:
print filename
raw_input('Done.')
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()
|
Regular Expressions could be used to implement this program, but may confuse some people to begin with. If IDLE is not desired for searching files, then the code above can accomplish the like-minded task of finding the file that is difficult to find.
Tags: files
os.walk(). You should have a look at os.walk() ( http://docs.python.org/lib/os-file-dir.html#l2h-2707 ).