CODEWITHSUNDEEP
python
mos
mos

Reputation: 337

python get extension file: splitext vs endswith

I'm wondering which is the better way of these two ones to get the file extension, and check if it belongs to a list.

name, ext = os.path.splitext(filename)
return ext == ".pdf" # an example

or

return filename.endswith(".pdf")

Upvotes: 5

Views: 5529

Answers (3)

Steven Summers
Steven Summers

Reputation: 5384

Here are two examples of checking with both methods if a filename contains any of the extensions.

ext = ('.txt', '.py', '.docx', '.pdf') # tuple of extensions.

filenames = [ ... ] # list of filename strings
ends_matches = [ f for f in filenames if f.endswith(ext) ]

# change ext to set for slightly better efficiency.
split_matches = [ f for f in filenames if f.splitext()[1] in ext ]

# may need to include .lower() for cases with capital extensions.

In this case it is really up to you which you want to use. If you just want to check a single file extension then I would suggest with the latter, endswith.

return filename.endswith(extension)

Upvotes: 6

ospahiu
ospahiu

Reputation: 3525

endswith() is commonly used to check for file names. A pythonic approach to filter out certain file extensions in a list of file names could be done as follows:

>>> extensions = ('.pdf', '.txt', '.rtf')
>>> [file_name for file_name in files if file_name.lower().endswith(extensions)]
# Output -> File names that end with any of those extensions.

With this sort of approach you can provide many file extensions in a tuple, and potentially eliminating an if/else ladder (clean code :D).

Upvotes: 1

Wookie88
Wookie88

Reputation: 34911

Second one is cleaner and shorter solution I would say if you need to only check for specific extension. Both work even on special cases like filename = abc.def.pdf.

First one is better if you need to process somehow filename and/or extension later.

Upvotes: 1

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