How can I retun a list of absolute paths?

Question

The following code returns a list of file-names in a given directory:

def get_files(dir_path_str):
    onlyfiles = next(os.walk(dir_path_str))[2]
    return onlyfiles

How can I make it return absolute file paths with minimal modification and preserve the behavior of the function?

Answer 1

The easiest way to do this is with pathlib

Make your input directory a Path object, use .iterdir() to get all the files/folders inside that directory, use .absolute() to make them absolute and .is_file() to check that they're files:

from pathlib import Path


def get_files(inp_path_str):
    directory = Path(inp_path_str)
    only_files = [file.absolute() for file in directory.iterdir() if file.is_file()]
    return only_files

If you want the paths to be strings rather than Path objects, pathlib Paths can have str() called on them:

only_files = [str(file.absolute()) for file in directory.iterdir() if file.is_file()]

Or as a fully expanded loop rather than a list comprehension:

def get_files(inp_path_str):
    directory = Path(inp_path_str)
    only_files = []
    for file in directory.iterdir():
        if file.is_file():
            only_files.append(str(file.absolute()))
    return only_files