How do I get a listing of only files using Dir.glob?

Question

How can I return a list of only the files, not directories, in a specified directory?

I have my_list = Dir.glob(script_path.join("*"))

This returns everything in the directory,including subdirectories. I searched but haven't been able to find the answer.

Solution 1

In addition to Mark's answer, Dir.entries will give back directories. If you just want the files, you can test each entry to see if it's a file or a directory, by using file?.

Dir.entries('/home/theiv').select { |f| File.file?(f) }

Replace /home/theiv with whatever directory you want to look for files in.

Also, have a look at File. It provides a bunch of tests and properties you can retrieve about files.

Solution 2

Dir.glob('*').select { |fn| File.file?(fn) }

Solution 3

Entries don't do rescursion i think. If you want the files in the subdirs also use

puts Dir['**/*'].select { |f| File.file?(f) }

Solution 4

If you want to do it in one go instead of first creating an array and then iterating over it with select, you can do something like:

my_list = []
Dir.foreach(dir) { |f| my_list << f if File.file?(f) }

Solution 5

Following @karl-li 's suggestion in @theIV solution, I found this to work well:

Dir.entries('path/to/files/folder').reject { |f| File.directory?(f) }

View more solutions

Comments

[PJP]

Dir.entries returns both files and subdirectories, and is similar to glob without the filename mask. ` Dir.entries("testdir") #=> [".", "..", "config.h", "main.rb"]`. The first two values returned are directories.

[Aram Kocharyan]

I had to use File.file?("/home/theiv/#{f}")

[karl li]

in the mapping section: select {|f| File.file?(f)}, the |f| is just the file name, not complete path. So you need to compose a complete one, say File.file?("/home/theiv/#{f}"), otherwise it doesn't work. Or for a simpler way, use: !File.directory(f) instead.