Organizing Files & Folders Using Python Part-1

📂 Organizing Files & Folders Using Python (Path & OS) — Part 1

Managing files and folders is a core skill for every developer and power user.

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📌 Table of Contents (jump links)

• 📍 Understanding File Paths
• 📁 Creating Files & Folders at a Specific Path
• ✅ Checking Path Availability
• 📄 Checking Whether Path is File or Folder
• 📂 Fetching Files & Folders Inside a Directory (iter & os.listdir)
• 🔍 Filtering Files by Extension & Other Criteria

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📍 Understanding File Paths in Python

Paths are strings that indicate where a file or folder lives:

• Windows: C:\Users\Admin\data\file.txt
• Linux/macOS: /home/user/data/file.txt

Python libraries:

• 📦 os — long-standing, very flexible (functions like os.path.join, os.listdir, os.walk).
• 🧭 pathlib.Path — object-oriented paths (recommended for readability and fewer bugs).

Example tree (visualized):

📁 project/
 ├── 📁 data/
 │    ├── 📁 reports/
 │    │    ├── 📄 summary.txt
 │    │    ├── 📄 sales.csv
 │    └── 📁 images/
 │         ├── 🖼️ logo.png
 └── 📁 scripts/
      └── 📄 organizer.py

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📁 Creating Files & Folders at a Specific Path

🧱 Using os.makedirs (create nested folders)

import os

path = "project/data/reports"

# create nested folders safely (no error if they already exist)
os.makedirs(path, exist_ok=True)

print("📁 Created:", path)

Resulting structure:

📁 project/
 └── 📁 data/
     └── 📁 reports/

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✅ Checking Path Availability

🔍 Path.exists()

from pathlib import Path

p = Path("project/data/reports")

print("Exists?", p.exists()) # Output will be True or False

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📄 Checking Whether Path is File or Folder

import os
from pathlib import Path

p1 = "project/data/reports/summary.txt"
p2 = "project/data/reports"

pp1 = Path(p1)
pp2 = Path(p2)
print("Path - is_file:", pp1.is_file())
print("Path - is_dir:", pp2.is_dir())

Output example:

📄 Path - is_file: True
📁 Path - is_dir: True

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📂 Fetching Files & Folders Inside a Directory

🧩 Using pathlib.Path.iterdir() (Path objects)

from pathlib import Path

folder = Path("project/data")

for item in folder.iterdir(): # folder.iterdir() is a list of all files and folders inside the parent folder
    if item.is_file():
        print("📄", item.name)
    else:
        print("📁", item.name)

Example output:

📁 reports
📁 images

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🔍 Filtering Files by Extension & Other Criteria

✅ Filter by extension (case-insensitive)

from pathlib import Path

folder = Path("project/data/reports")
ext = ".txt"

for f in folder.iterdir():
    if f.is_file() and f.suffix.lower() == ext:
        print("📄", f.name)

Example output:

📄 summary.txt

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🧾 Filter by multiple extensions

from pathlib import Path

exts = {".jpg", ".jpeg", ".png", ".gif"}
for p in Path("project/data/images").iterdir():
    if p.is_file() and p.suffix.lower() in exts:
        print("🖼️", p.name)

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