It occurs to me that it might be useful if Python provided a function to
search for a file with a given name in various directories (much as the
import.import_lib function searches for a module in the directories in
sys.path).
This function would perhaps be best placed in the os.path or os modules.
To start the ball rolling, I offer this version:
import sys
import os
def findfile(fileName, *PathLists):
if not PathLists:
# Default to searching just sys.path:
PathLists = [ sys.path ]
# This may or may not be the most useful default;
# there is a case for having no default, forcing calls of this
function
# to explicitly specifiy which paths they want to search,
# and perhaps raise an Exception if they don't;
# suggestions welcome.
for pList in PathLists:
# if pList is a str, assume it is a semicolon-separated list of
directories
# (like the PATH and PYTHONPATH environment variables);
# otherwise assume it is a sequence of paths (like sys.path):
if isinstance(pList, str):
pList = pList.split(';')
for path in pList:
filePath = os.path.join(path, fileName)
if os.path.isfile(filePath):
return filePath
# Return first match found.
# Another possibility is to return a list of all matches.
return None
Then e.g.
print(findfile('os.py'))
would print something like
C:\Python311\Lib\os.py
This idea was partly inspired by Michael Stemper asking about best
practice for placing, and finding, a configuration file.
Thoughts?
Best wishes
Rob Cliffe
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