CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonfiledirectory
chakolatemilk
chakolatemilk

Reputation: 883

Search directory for specific string

I'm trying to search through a specific directory full of header files, and look through each header file, and if any file has a string "struct" in it, I just want the program to print which file has it.

I have this so far, but it's not working correctly, can you help me figure it out:

import glob
import os
os.chdir( "C:/headers" )
for files in glob.glob( "*.h" ):
    f = open( files, 'r' )
    for line in f:
        if "struct" in line:
            print( f )

Upvotes: 13

Views: 31491

Answers (2)

Hai Vu
Hai Vu

Reputation: 40803

It seems you are interested in the file name, not the line, so we can speed thing up by reading the whole file and search:

...
for file in glob.glob('*.h'):
    with open(file) as f:
        contents = f.read()
    if 'struct' in contents:
        print file

Using the with construct ensures the file to be closed properly. The f.read() function reads the whole file.

Update

Since the original poster stated that his code was not printing, I suggest to insert a debugging line:

...
for file in glob.glob('*.h'):
    print 'DEBUG: file=>{0}<'.format(file)
    with open(file) as f:
        contents = f.read()
    if 'struct' in contents:
        print file

If you don't see any line that starts with 'DEBUG:', then your glob() returned an empty list. That means you landed in a wrong directory. Check the spelling for your directory, along with the directory's contents.

If you see the 'DEBUG:' lines, but don't see the intended output, your files might not have any 'struct' in in. Check for that case by first cd to the directory, and issue the following DOS command:

find "struct" *.h

Upvotes: 14

Nate
Nate

Reputation: 925

This works when I test it on my end:

for files in glob.glob( "*.h" ):
    f = open( files, 'r' )
    file_contents = f.read()
    if "struct" in file_contents:
            print f.name
    f.close()

Make sure you print f.name, otherwise you're printing the file object, and not the name of the file itself.

Upvotes: 1

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