For combining (1) and (2) you can reverse the sort by only trying if your are under a test directory

Also this is a great use for a generator / map combo to avoid extra loops

import os 
import re

is_xml = re.compile('xml', re.I)
is_test = re.compile('testResults', re.I)

def find_xml_tests(root):
    for current, dirnames, filenames in os.walk(root):
        if is_test.search(current):
            for filename in filenames:
                if is_xml.search(filename):
                    yield  os.path.normpath(os.path.join(current, filename))
def touch(filename ):
    os.utime(test,(time.time(),time.time()))

map(touch, find_xml_tests('path/to/files'))

For combining (1) and (2) you can reverse the sort by only trying if your are under a test directory

Also this is a great use for a generator / map combo to avoid extra loops

import os 
import re

is_xml = re.compile('xml', re.I)
is_test = re.compile('testResults', re.I)

def find_xml_tests(root):
    for current, dirnames, filenames in os.walk(root):
        if is_test.search(current):
            for filename in filter(lambda p: is_xml.search(p),  filenames):
                yield  os.path.normpath(os.path.join(current, filename)) 

def touch(filename ):
    os.utime(test,(time.time(),time.time()))

map(touch, find_xml_tests('path/to/files'))