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I'm curious when these two functions will return different values. Also if you could clarify the difference between a path/directory/file that would be appreciated.
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path. isfile() method in Python is used to check whether the specified path is an existing regular file or not.
os. path. isdir() method in Python is used to check whether the specified path is an existing directory or not. This method follows a symbolic link, which means if the specified path is a symbolic link pointing to a directory then the method will return True.
listdir() method returns a list of every file and folder in a directory. os. walk() function returns a list of every file in an entire file tree.
isfile() function takes the path of a file as a parameter and checks whether the given path contains a valid file. This function returns 'true' when the given path is a regular file and returns 'false' if the given path is not a regular file.
As you have already found out, the difference between exists and isfile is the fact that the former returns True in case the given path is a directory or a file, while the latter only returns True if the path points to a file.
Directories and files are quite similar from the technical point of view. A file can contain any kind of data. A directory is just a special entry in the file system (at least on Unix operating systems it is just a special file) that represents the fact that it may contain files and other directories. It is a helpful means for building up a data structure. Using directories, you can organize your data in a hierarchical structure.
Especially in the Windows world, directories are often called "folders". I am sure that you yourself are using "folders" for organizing your files.
A path is an unambiguous pointer to a resource in the file system. It can either point to a file or to a directory.
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