Finding empty files in Python

Question

What's the best way in Python to find all empty (zero byte) files, recursively, from a given directory? I could use os.walk and stat each file, but that seems very inefficient. Thanks.

How are you going to know if they're zero-byte unless you stat them? — agf
– agf, Commented Sep 1, 2011 at 17:20

Ross Patterson · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-01 17:24:11Z

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I'm not sure how you'd get more efficient than os.walk and stat since that's fundamentally what you're doing. You could use some external command/service through Python's subprocess.Popen but then that's hardly "in python".

answered Sep 1, 2011 at 17:24

Ross Patterson

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Dave Crumbacher Over a year ago

After doing some testing with os.walk and stat, it doesn't seem to be much different than the OS command "find <dir> -empty". Given my minimal expertise, I was thinking there may be a better way, but apparently not. Thanks for the quick response.

David Nehme · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-01 17:34:50Z

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First, you should make it work, then figure out how to make it faster. You shouldn't start with a feeling that the most obvious way "seems very inefficient" If you want efficient, you can try the native OS.

os.system("find . -empty")

answered Sep 1, 2011 at 17:34

David Nehme

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