How to check to see if a folder contains files using python 3

You can make use of the new pathlib library introduced in Python 3.4 to extract all non-empty subdirectories recursively, eg:

import pathlib

root = pathlib.Path('some/path/here')
non_empty_dirs = {str(p.parent) for p in root.rglob('*') if p.is_file()}

Since you have to walk the tree anyway, we build a set of the parent directories where a file is present which results in a set of directories that contain files - then do as you wish with the result.

If you can delete the directory, you can use this:

my_path = os.path.abspath("something")               
try:
    os.rmdir(my_path)
    is_empty = True
    # Do you need to keep the directory? Recreate it!
    # os.makedirs(my_path, exist_ok=True)
except OSError:
    is_empty = False

if is_empty:
    pass

The os.rmdir only removes a directory if it is empty, otherwise it throws the OSError exception.

You can find a discussion about this on:

1. https://bytes.com/topic/python/answers/157394-how-determine-if-folder-empty

For example, deleting an empty directory is fine when you are planing to do a git clone, but not if you are checking beforehand whether the directory is empty, so your program does not throw an empty directory error.

Adding to @Jon Clements’ pathlib answer, I wanted to check if the folder is empty with pathlib but without creating a set:

from pathlib import Path

# shorter version from @vogdb
is_empty = not any(Path('some/path/here').iterdir())

# similar but unnecessary complex
is_empty = not bool(sorted(Path('some/path/here').rglob('*')))

vogdb method attempts to iterate over all files in the given directory. If there is no files, any() will be False. We negate it with not so that is_empty is True if no files and False if files.

sorted(Path(path_here).rglob('*')) return a list of sorted PosixPah items. If there is no items, it returns an empty list, which is False. So is_empty will be True if the path is empty and false if the path have something

Similar idea results {} and [] gives the same:

'files' already tells you whats in the directory. Just check it:

for dirpath, dirnames, files in os.walk('.'):
    if files:
        print(dirpath, 'has files')
    if not files:
        print(dirpath, 'does not have files')