Run Pylint for all Python files in a directory and all subdirectories

Question

I have

find . -iname "*.py" -exec pylint -E {} ;\ 

and

FILES=$(find . -iname "*.py") pylint -E $FILES 

If I understand correctly, the first command will run pylint for each of the Python files, the second one will run pylint once for all files. I expected that both commands would return the same output, but they return different results. I think this diff is somehow related to imports and F (failure) pylint messages, which occurs when a import fails and is not output by pylint -E.

Has someone already experienced this and could explain why the diff happens and what is the best way to run pylint?

Answer 1

Just pass the directory name to the pylint command. To lint all files in ./server:

pylint ./server 

Note that this requires the __init__.py file to exist in the target directory.

Answer 2

My one cent

find . -type f -name "*.py" | xargs pylint  

How does it work?

find finds all files ends with py and pass to xargs, xargs runs pylint command on each file.

NOTE: You can give any argument to pylint command as well.

EDIT:

According to doc we can use

1. pylint mymodule.py

2. pylint directory/mymodule.py

3. pylint ./module

number 2 will work if the directory is a python package (i.e. has an __init__.py file or it is an implicit namespace package) or if the “directory” is in the python path.