checking if there is a folder with a name that start with a specific string

Question

I'm writing a python script that is supposed to manage my running files. I want to make sure that the source and target folder exist before I run it and I can do this with os.path.exists. However, I have a set of foldernames runner<i>. Is there a way to check that there is some folders begining with that name?

For example, if in the path /path/to/runners I have at least one folder named runner:

/path/to/runners/ $ ls file1.txt
file2.txt
folder1
folder2
runner1 runner35
zfolder

Then the result is true. Remove runner1 and runner35 and it will be false.

Answer 1

You could do the following:

import os
if any(x.startswith('runner') for x in os.listdir('/path/to/runners')):
    print "At least one entry begins with 'runner'"

That uses the helpful any function and a generator expression.