---
title: "How I glob for Files in Python"
description: "A very common task for any script is to look for files on the system. My go to method when globbing for files in python is to use pathlib."
date: 2022-03-17
published: false
tags:
  - python
template: til
---


A very common task for any script is to look for files on the system.  My go to
method when globbing for files in python is to use pathlib.

## Setup

I setup a directory to make some examples about globbing.  Here is what the
directory looks like.

``` bash
❯ tree .
.
├── content
│   ├── hello.md
│   ├── hello.py
│   ├── me.md
│   └── you.md
├── readme.md
├── README.md
├── READMES.md
└── setup.py
```

1 directory, 8 files
## Pathlib

Pathlib is a standard library module available in all LTS versions of python at
this point.

``` python
❯ from pathlib import Path
```

Creating a Path instance.

``` python
# current working directory
Path()
Path.cwd()

# The users home directory
Path.home()

# Path to a directory by string
Path('/path/to/directory')

# The users ~/.config directory
Path.home() / '.config'
```

## Globbing Examples

The path object has a glob method that allows you to glob for files with a unix
style glob pattern to search for files.  Note that it gives you a generator.
This is great for many use cases, but for examples its easier to turn them to a
list to print them out.

If you need some more detail on what globbing is there is a
[wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glob_(programming)) article
discussing it.  I am just showing how to glob with pathlib.

``` python

❯ Path().glob("**/*.md")
<generator object Path.glob at 0x7fa35adc4f90>

❯ list(Path().glob("**/*.md"))

[
    PosixPath('readme.md'),
    PosixPath('READMES.md'),
    PosixPath('README.md'),
    PosixPath('content/you.md'),
    PosixPath('content/me.md'),
    PosixPath('content/hello.md')
]

❯ list(Path().glob("**/*.py"))
[PosixPath('setup.py'), PosixPath('content/hello.py')]

❯ list(Path().glob("*.md"))
[PosixPath('readme.md'), PosixPath('READMES.md'), PosixPath('README.md')]

❯ list(Path().glob("*.py"))
[PosixPath('setup.py')]

❯ list(Path().glob("**/*hello*"))
[PosixPath('content/hello.py'), PosixPath('content/hello.md')]

❯ list(Path().glob("**/REA?ME.md"))
[PosixPath('README.md')]
```