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Taylor Fritz
13,265 PointsHow to check if file names exist in a directory list?
Not sure how to think about this. The video was not quite helpful as is many of the Python videos and challenges.
import os
def dir_contains(path, list):
path_contents = os.listdir(path)
file_names = list(os.scandir())
if path_contents == file_names:
return True
else:
return False
2 Answers
Jennifer Nordell
Treehouse TeacherHi there, Taylor Fritz! You have a few things going on here. First, you've used a Python keyword as a parameter. You've used list but that word is reserved by Python. We're taking a list of files. The path_contents is fine as it is. What we want to do is loop through the file list that was sent to us. If any one of those files is not in the path_contents we should return False as it wasn't found. If it makes it through the entire list and never hits that return False then it means it never ran into a file that wasn't found in that directory. Remember that any time a return is hit, the function will cease execution right then and not evaluate anything further.
import os
def dir_contains(path, file_names): # I changed list to another variable name
path_contents = os.listdir(path) # this is the contents of the directory
for file in file_names: # loop through the file names
if file not in path_contents: # if it didn't find the file in the directory
return False #return false
return True # if it makes it through the entire list and all of them were found
Hope this helps!
Taylor Fritz
13,265 PointsThank you for your help with this Jennifer! And thank you for explaining the goal. It makes sense, how you explained! :)