How to count the number of files in a directory using Python

This uses os.listdir and works for any directory:

import os
directory = 'mydirpath'

number_of_files = len([item for item in os.listdir(directory) if os.path.isfile(os.path.join(directory, item))])

this can be simplified with a generator and made a little bit faster with:

import os
isfile = os.path.isfile
join = os.path.join

directory = 'mydirpath'
number_of_files = sum(1 for item in os.listdir(directory) if isfile(join(directory, item)))

def count_em(valid_path):
   x = 0
   for root, dirs, files in os.walk(valid_path):
       for f in files:
            x = x+1
print "There are", x, "files in this directory."
return x

Taked from this post

import os

def count_files(in_directory):
    joiner= (in_directory + os.path.sep).__add__
    return sum(
        os.path.isfile(filename)
        for filename
        in map(joiner, os.listdir(in_directory))
    )

>>> count_files("/usr/lib")
1797
>>> len(os.listdir("/usr/lib"))
2049

import os

_, _, files = next(os.walk("/usr/lib"))
file_count = len(files)

Luke’s code reformat.

import os

print len(os.walk('/usr/lib').next()[2])

def directory(path,extension):
  list_dir = []
  list_dir = os.listdir(path)
  count = 0
  for file in list_dir:
    if file.endswith(extension): # eg: '.txt'
      count += 1
  return count

This is where fnmatch comes very handy:

import fnmatch

print len(fnmatch.filter(os.listdir(dirpath), '*.txt'))

More details: http://docs.python.org/2/library/fnmatch.html

import os
print len(os.listdir(os.getcwd()))

import os

total_con=os.listdir('<directory path>')

files=[]

for f_n in total_con:
   if os.path.isfile(f_n):
     files.append(f_n)


print len(files)

If you’ll be using the standard shell of the operating system, you can get the result much faster rather than using pure pythonic way.

Example for Windows:

import os
import subprocess

def get_num_files(path):
    cmd = 'DIR "%s" /A-D /B /S | FIND /C /V ""' % path
    return int(subprocess.check_output(cmd, shell=True))

I found another answer which may be correct as accepted answer.

for root, dirs, files in os.walk(input_path):    
for name in files:
    if os.path.splitext(name)[1] == '.TXT' or os.path.splitext(name)[1] == '.txt':
        datafiles.append(os.path.join(root,name)) 


print len(files) 

For all kind of files, subdirectories included (Python 2):

import os

lst = os.listdir(directory) # your directory path
number_files = len(lst)
print number_files

Only files (avoiding subdirectories):

import os

onlyfiles = next(os.walk(directory))[2] #directory is your directory path as string
print len(onlyfiles)

Here is a simple one-line command that I found useful:

print int(os.popen("ls | wc -l").read())

I used glob.iglob for a directory structure similar to

data
└───train
│   └───subfolder1
│   |   │   file111.png
│   |   │   file112.png
│   |   │   ...
│   |
│   └───subfolder2
│       │   file121.png
│       │   file122.png
│       │   ...
└───test
    │   file221.png
    │   file222.png

Both of the following options return 4 (as expected, i.e. does not count the subfolders themselves)

• len(list(glob.iglob("data/train/*/*.png", recursive=True)))
• sum(1 for i in glob.iglob("data/train/*/*.png"))

i did this and this returned the number of files in the folder(Attack_Data)…this works fine.

import os
def fcount(path):
    #Counts the number of files in a directory
    count = 0
    for f in os.listdir(path):
        if os.path.isfile(os.path.join(path, f)):
            count += 1

    return count
path = r"C:UsersEE EKORODesktopAttack_Data" #Read files in folder
print (fcount(path))

I am surprised that nobody mentioned os.scandir:

def count_files(dir):
    return len([1 for x in list(os.scandir(dir)) if x.is_file()])

If you want to count all files in the directory – including files in subdirectories, the most pythonic way is:

import os

file_count = sum(len(files) for _, _, files in os.walk(r'C:Dropbox'))
print(file_count)

We use sum that is faster than explicitly adding the file counts (timings pending)

It is simple:

print(len([iq for iq in os.scandir('PATH')]))

it simply counts number of files in directory , i have used list comprehension technique to iterate through specific directory returning all files in return . “len(returned list)” returns number of files.

While I agree with the answer provided by @DanielStutzbach: os.listdir() will be slightly more efficient than using glob.glob.

However, an extra precision, if you do want to count the number of specific files in folder, you want to use len(glob.glob()). For instance if you were to count all the pdfs in a folder you want to use:

pdfCounter = len(glob.glob1(myPath,"*.pdf"))

I solved this problem while calculating the number of files in a Google Drive directory through Google Colab by directing myself into the directory folder by:

%cd /content/drive/My Drive/

To count directory content:

import os                                                                                                

print(len([x for x in os.listdir('folder_name/')  if os.path.isfile(x)]))  

one liner and recursive:

def count_files(path):
    return sum([len(files) for _, _, files in os.walk(path)])

count_files('path/to/dir')

An answer with pathlib and without loading the whole list to memory:

from pathlib import Path

path = Path('.')

print(sum(1 for _ in path.glob('*')))  # Files and folders, not recursive
print(sum(1 for _ in path.glob('**/*')))  # Files and folders, recursive

print(sum(1 for x in path.glob('*') if x.is_file()))  # Only files, not recursive
print(sum(1 for x in path.glob('**/*') if x.is_file()))  # Only files, recursive

Short and simple

import os
directory_path = '/home/xyz/'
No_of_files = len(os.listdir(directory_path))

A simple utility function I wrote that makes use of os.scandir() instead of os.listdir().

import os 

def count_files_in_dir(path: str) -> int:
    file_entries = [entry for entry in os.scandir(path) if entry.is_file()]

    return len(file_entries)

The main benefit is that, the need for os.path.is_file() is eliminated and replaced with os.DirEntry instance’s is_file() which also removes the need for os.path.join(DIR, file_name) as shown in other answers.

This is an easy solution that counts the number of files in a directory containing sub-folders. It may come in handy:

import os
from pathlib import Path

def count_files(rootdir):
    '''counts the number of files in each subfolder in a directory'''
    for path in pathlib.Path(rootdir).iterdir():
        if path.is_dir():
            print("There are " + str(len([name for name in os.listdir(path) 
            if os.path.isfile(os.path.join(path, name))])) + " files in " + 
            str(path.name))
            
 
count_files(data_dir) # data_dir is the directory you want files counted.

You should get an output similar to this (with the placeholders changed, of course):

There are {number of files} files in {name of sub-folder1}
There are {number of files} files in {name of sub-folder2}

Convert it to a list, after that you can make use of the len() function:

len(list(glob.glob('*')))

Simpler one:

import os
number_of_files = len(os.listdir(directory))
print(number_of_files)

I find that sometimes I don’t know if I will receive filenames or the path to the file. So I printed the os walk solution output:

def count_number_of_raw_data_point_files(path: Union[str, Path], with_file_prefix: str) -> int:
    import os
    path: Path = force_expanduser(path)

    _, _, files = next(os.walk(path))
    # file_count = len(files)
    filename: str
    count: int = 0
    for filename in files:
        print(f'-->{filename=}')  # e.g. print -->filename='data_point_99.json'
        if with_file_prefix in filename:
            count += 1
    return count

out:

-->filename='data_point_780.json'
-->filename='data_point_781.json'
-->filename='data_point_782.json'
-->filename='data_point_783.json'
-->filename='data_point_784.json'
-->filename='data_point_785.json'
-->filename='data_point_786.json'
-->filename='data_point_787.json'
-->filename='data_point_788.json'
-->filename='data_point_789.json'
-->filename='data_point_79.json'
-->filename='data_point_790.json'
-->filename='data_point_791.json'
-->filename='data_point_792.json'
-->filename='data_point_793.json'
-->filename='data_point_794.json'
-->filename='data_point_795.json'
-->filename='data_point_796.json'
-->filename='data_point_797.json'
-->filename='data_point_798.json'
-->filename='data_point_799.json'
-->filename='data_point_8.json'
-->filename='data_point_80.json'
-->filename='data_point_800.json'
-->filename='data_point_801.json'
-->filename='data_point_802.json'
-->filename='data_point_803.json'
-->filename='data_point_804.json'
-->filename='data_point_805.json'
-->filename='data_point_806.json'
-->filename='data_point_807.json'
-->filename='data_point_808.json'
-->filename='data_point_809.json'
-->filename='data_point_81.json'
-->filename='data_point_810.json'
-->filename='data_point_811.json'
-->filename='data_point_812.json'
-->filename='data_point_813.json'
-->filename='data_point_814.json'
-->filename='data_point_815.json'
-->filename='data_point_816.json'
-->filename='data_point_817.json'
-->filename='data_point_818.json'
-->filename='data_point_819.json'
-->filename='data_point_82.json'
-->filename='data_point_820.json'
-->filename='data_point_821.json'
-->filename='data_point_822.json'
-->filename='data_point_823.json'
-->filename='data_point_824.json'
-->filename='data_point_825.json'
-->filename='data_point_826.json'
-->filename='data_point_827.json'
-->filename='data_point_828.json'
-->filename='data_point_829.json'
-->filename='data_point_83.json'
-->filename='data_point_830.json'
-->filename='data_point_831.json'
-->filename='data_point_832.json'
-->filename='data_point_833.json'
-->filename='data_point_834.json'
-->filename='data_point_835.json'
-->filename='data_point_836.json'
-->filename='data_point_837.json'
-->filename='data_point_838.json'
-->filename='data_point_839.json'
-->filename='data_point_84.json'
-->filename='data_point_840.json'
-->filename='data_point_841.json'
-->filename='data_point_842.json'
-->filename='data_point_843.json'
-->filename='data_point_844.json'
-->filename='data_point_845.json'
-->filename='data_point_846.json'
-->filename='data_point_847.json'
-->filename='data_point_848.json'
-->filename='data_point_849.json'
-->filename='data_point_85.json'
-->filename='data_point_850.json'
-->filename='data_point_851.json'
-->filename='data_point_852.json'
-->filename='data_point_853.json'
-->filename='data_point_86.json'
-->filename='data_point_87.json'
-->filename='data_point_88.json'
-->filename='data_point_89.json'
-->filename='data_point_9.json'
-->filename='data_point_90.json'
-->filename='data_point_91.json'
-->filename='data_point_92.json'
-->filename='data_point_93.json'
-->filename='data_point_94.json'
-->filename='data_point_95.json'
-->filename='data_point_96.json'
-->filename='data_point_97.json'
-->filename='data_point_98.json'
-->filename='data_point_99.json'
854

note you might have to sort.

I would like to extend the reply from @Mr_and_Mrs_D:

import os
folder = 'C:/Dropbox'
file_count = sum(len(files) for _, _, files in os.walk(folder))
print(file_count)

This counts all the files in the folder and its subfolders. However, if you want to do some filtering – like only counting the files ending in .svg, you can do:

import os
file_count = sum(len([f for f in files if f.endswith('.svg')]) for _, _, files in os.walk(folder))
print(file_count)

You basically replace:

• len(files)

with:

• len([f for f in files if f.endswith('.svg')])

I suppose, using just a shell command is a short and simple solution (based on):

import os

no_files = os.popen(f"ls -F {directory_name} | grep -v / | wc -l")
print(no_files)

• ls -F – shows the contents of a directory and adds an indicator character to entry names: *, /, =, >, @ or |. In our case, we’re most interested in / to mark directories.
• grep -v / – keeps in the output all strings not containing /.
• wc -l – counts output’s lines.

directory_name is optional.