Checking the Existence of a File or Directory in Python

In Python, you can easily check whether a file or directory exists using the os.path.exists() method from the os standard library module. This method returns True if the specified file or directory exists, and False otherwise.

Here is an example showcasing how to use os.path.exists() to check the existence of a file:

import os

filename = '/Users/flavio/test.txt'

exists = os.path.exists(filename)

print(exists)  # True

In the above code, we import the os module and assign the file path ‘/Users/flavio/test.txt’ to the filename variable. Then, we call the os.path.exists() method with the filename variable as the argument. The method returns True if the file exists and False if it doesn’t. We assign the result to the exists variable.

Finally, we print the value of the exists variable, which determines whether the file exists in the specified file path. In this case, the output will be True if the file exists.

Please note that the os.path.exists() method can be used to check the existence of both files and directories. If you pass a directory path to the method, it will return True if the directory exists and False if it doesn’t.

Tags: Python, file existence, directory existence