How to check if folder is empty with Python?

Question

I am trying to check if a folder is empty and do the following:

import os downloadsFolder = '../../Downloads/' if not os.listdir(downloadsFolder):     print "empty" else:     print "not empty" 

Unfortunately, I always get "not empty" no matter if I have any files in that folder or not. Is it because there might be some hidden system files? Is there a way to modify the above code to check just for not hidden files?

Answer 1

You can use these two methods from the os module.

First option:

import os if len(os.listdir('/your/path')) == 0:     print("Directory is empty") else:         print("Directory is not empty") 

Second option (as an empty list evaluates to False in Python):

import os if not os.listdir('/your/path'):     print("Directory is empty") else:         print("Directory is not empty") 

However, the os.listdir() can throw an exception, for example when the given path does not exist. Therefore, you need to cover this.

import os dir_name = '/your/path' if os.path.isdir(dir_name):     if not os.listdir(dir_name):         print("Directory is empty")     else:             print("Directory is not empty") else:     print("Given directory doesn't exist") 

I hope it will be helpful for you.