How to list only top level directories in Python?

os.walk

Use os.walk with next item function:

next(os.walk('.'))[1]

For Python <=2.5 use:

os.walk('.').next()[1]

How this works

os.walk is a generator and calling next will get the first result in the form of a 3-tuple (dirpath, dirnames, filenames). Thus the [1] index returns only the dirnames from that tuple.

Filter the result using os.path.isdir() (and use os.path.join() to get the real path):

>>> [ name for name in os.listdir(thedir) if os.path.isdir(os.path.join(thedir, name)) ]
['ctypes', 'distutils', 'encodings', 'lib-tk', 'config', 'idlelib', 'xml', 'bsddb', 'hotshot', 'logging', 'doc', 'test', 'compiler', 'curses', 'site-packages', 'email', 'sqlite3', 'lib-dynload', 'wsgiref', 'plat-linux2', 'plat-mac']