Python Os.Walk()

Python has a cool built-in function in the OS module that is called os.walk() .

OS.Walk()

OS.walk() generate the file names in a directory tree by walking the tree either top-down or bottom-up.

For each directory in the tree rooted at directory top (including top itself), it yields a 3-tuple (dirpath, dirnames, filenames).

Paths

root : Prints out directories only from what you specified
dirs : Prints out sub-directories from root. 
files: Prints out all files from root and directories

• Having fun with OS.Walk in Python
• OS.Walk and Fnmatch in Python
• How to Traverse a Directory Tree in Python – Guide to os.walk

Making a script

Having that information we can create a simple script doing just that. This script will print out all directories, sub-directories and files from the path I specified (/var/log)

import os
print "root prints out directories only from what you specified"
print "dirs prints out sub-directories from root"
print "files prints out all files from root and directories"
print "*" * 20
for root, dirs, files in os.walk("/var/log"):
    print root
    print dirs
    print files

Using getsize

The second examples extends the first one with showing how much every file consumes using the getsize function.

print "This is using getsize to see how much every file consumes"
print "---------------"
from os.path import join, getsize
for root, dirs, files in os.walk('/tmp'):
    print root, "consumes",
    print sum([getsize(join(root, name)) for name in files]),
    print "bytes in", len(files), "non-directory files"