How to use Glob() Function to Find Files Recursively in Python (original) (raw)

Last Updated : 3 Oct, 2025

**Glob is a powerful pattern-matching technique widely used in Unix and Linux environments for matching file and directory names based on wildcard patterns. Python’s built-in **glob module provides similar functionality, enabling you to easily find files and directories matching specific patterns. The glob module uses Unix shell-style wildcards such as:

* matches zero or more characters
? matches exactly one character
[abc] or [a-z] matches any one character from the set or range

Because glob follows these patterns, it offers a simple yet powerful way to search files by name patterns without manually parsing directories.

Why Use glob?

**Built-in module: No need to install external libraries.
**Efficient: According to benchmarks, glob is generally faster than manual directory scanning.
**Simple API: Easy to use for common and complex file searches.
**Wildcard support: Search with flexible patterns, not just exact names.

Recursive File Search with glob

From Python 3.5 onwards, the glob module supports recursive searching using the ** pattern combined with the recursive=True argument. It's Key Points include:

** means “this directory and all subdirectories, recursively.”
You must set recursive=True for ** to be interpreted as recursive.
Both glob.glob() (returns a list) and glob.iglob() (returns an iterator) support recursion.

Syntax

glob.glob(pathname, *, recursive=False)

glob.iglob(pathname, *, recursive=False)

pathname: The pattern string, which can include wildcards and directory paths.
recursive: Boolean flag to enable recursive matching with **.

**Example:

Python3 1== `

Python program to demonstrate

glob using different wildcards

import glob

print('Named explicitly:') for name in glob.glob('/home/geeks/Desktop/gfg/data.txt'): print(name)

Using '*' pattern

print('\nNamed with wildcard :') for name in glob.glob('/home/geeks/Desktop/gfg/'): print(name)

Using '?' pattern

print('\nNamed with wildcard ?:') for name in glob.glob('/home/geeks/Desktop/gfg/data?.txt'): print(name)

Using [0-9] pattern

print('\nNamed with wildcard ranges:') for name in glob.glob('/home/geeks/Desktop/gfg/[0-9].'): print(name)

**Output :

python-glob

Using Glob() function to find files recursively

We can use the function

glob.glob()

glob.iglob()

directly from glob module to retrieve paths recursively from inside the directories/files and subdirectories/subfiles.

**Syntax:

glob.glob(pathname, *, recursive=False)

glob.iglob(pathname, *, recursive=False)

**Note:

When recursive is set

True

**

" followed by path separator

('./**/')

will match any files or directories.

**Example:

Python3 1== `

Python program to find files

recursively using Python

import glob

Returns a list of names in list files.

print("Using glob.glob()") files = glob.glob('/home/geeks/Desktop/gfg/**/*.txt', recursive = True) for file in files: print(file)

It returns an iterator which will

be printed simultaneously.

print("\nUsing glob.iglob()") for filename in glob.iglob('/home/geeks/Desktop/gfg/**/*.txt', recursive = True): print(filename)

**Output :

python-glob

**For older versions of python:

The most simple method is to use

os.listdir()

as it is specifically designed and optimized to allow recursive browsing of a directory tree. Or we can also use

to get all the files in directory and subdirectories and then filter out. Let us see it through an example-

**Example:

Python3 1== `

Python program to find files

recursively using Python

import os

Using os.walk()

for dirpath, dirs, files in os.walk('src'): for filename in files: fname = os.path.join(dirpath,filename) if fname.endswith('.c'): print(fname)

""" Or We can also use fnmatch.filter() to filter out results. """ for dirpath, dirs, files in os.walk('src'): for filename in fnmatch.filter(files, '*.c'): print(os.path.join(dirpath, filename))

Using os.listdir()

path = "src" dir_list = os.listdir(path) for filename in fnmatch.filter(dir_list,'*.c'): print(os.path.join(dirpath, filename))

**Output :

./src/add.c
./src/subtract.c
./src/sub/mul.c
./src/sub/div.c