Process files in order

[Khoa Nguyen]

Hi,

I have a requirement to process all files in a directory in
chronological order. The os.listdir() function, however, lists the
files in random order. Is there a similar function in Python that
allows me to specify the listing order (like ls -t for example)?

Thanks,
Khoa

[Yu-Xi Lim]

Khoa Nguyen wrote:

I have a requirement to process all files in a directory in
chronological order. The os.listdir() function, however, lists the
files in random order. Is there a similar function in Python that
allows me to specify the listing order (like ls -t for example)?

There is no single command, but you can easily sort the results of
listdir using any criteria. Most file attributes can can be obtained
using os.stat (size, creation date, modification date, etc), and you can
just use that as a key to sort().

[Mike Kent]

How about using os.listdir to build a list of filenames, then sorting
them by modification time (via os.stat)?

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Khoa Nguyen a écrit :

Hi,

I have a requirement to process all files in a directory in
chronological order.

Access time, modification time ? Ascending, descending ?-)

The os.listdir() function, however, lists the
files in random order. Is there a similar function in Python that
allows me to specify the listing order (like ls -t for example)?

Not AFAIK. But os.path.get[acm]time(<filename>) and sorted() may help:

from os.path import getmtime, join, isfile
from os import listdir, getcwd

listfiles = lambda p: filter(isfile, # only list files
map(lambda f, p=p : join(p,f),
listdir(p)))

files = listfiles(getcwd())
sortedfiles = map(lambda item: item[1],
sorted(zip(map(getmtime, files), files)))
You can apply reversed() to sortedfiles if you want them in reversed order.
HTH

[bearophileHUGS]

A possibility:

import os
_, _, file_names = os.walk("").next()
print sorted(file_names, key=lambda fn: os.stat(fn)[8])

Bye,
bearophile