walk directory & ignore all files/directories begin with '.'

[MRAB]

albert kao wrote:
> I want to walk a directory and ignore all the files or directories
> which names begin in '.' (e.g. '.svn').
> Then I will process all the files.
> My test program walknodot.py does not do the job yet.
> Python version is 3.1 on windows XP.
> Please help.
> 
> [code]
> #!c:/Python31/python.exe -u
> import os
> import re
> 
> path = "C:\\test\\com.comp.hw.prod.proj.war\\bin"
> for dirpath, dirs, files in os.walk(path):
>     print ("dirpath " + dirpath)
>     p = re.compile('\\\.(\w)+$')
>     if p.match(dirpath):
>         continue
>     print ("dirpath " + dirpath)
>     for dir in dirs:
>         print ("dir " + dir)
>         if dir.startswith('.'):
>             continue
> 
>         print (files)
>         for filename in files:
>             print ("filename " + filename)
>             if filename.startswith('.'):
>                 continue
>             print ("dirpath filename " + dirpath + "\\" + filename)
>     	    # process the files here
> [/code]
> 
> C:\python>walknodot.py
> dirpath C:\test\com.comp.hw.prod.proj.war\bin
> dirpath C:\test\com.comp.hw.prod.proj.war\bin
> dir .svn
> dir com
> []
> dirpath C:\test\com.comp.hw.prod.proj.war\bin\.svn
> dirpath C:\test\com.comp.hw.prod.proj.war\bin\.svn
> ...
> 
> I do not expect C:\test\com.comp.hw.prod.proj.war\bin\.svn to appear
> twice.
> Please help.

The problem is with your use of the 'match' method, which will look for 
a match only at the start of the string. You need to use the 'search'
method instead.

The regular expression is also incorrect. The string literal:

     '\\\.(\w)+$'

passes the characters:

     \\.(\w)+$

to the re module as the regular expression, which will match a
backslash, then any character, then a word, then the end of the string.
What you want is:

     \\\.\w+$

(you don't need the parentheses) which is best expressed as the 'raw'
string literal:

     r'\\\.\w+$'