10.11. dircache — Cached directory listings

The dircache module defines a function for reading directory listing using a cache, and cache invalidation using the mtime of the directory. Additionally, it defines a function to annotate directories by appending a slash.

The dircache module defines the following functions:

dircache.reset()

Resets the directory cache.

dircache.listdir(path)

Return a directory listing of path, as gotten from os.listdir(). Note that unless path changes, further call to listdir() will not re-read the directory structure.

Note that the list returned should be regarded as read-only. (Perhaps a future version should change it to return a tuple?)

dircache.opendir(path)

Same as listdir(). Defined for backwards compatibility.

dircache.annotate(head, list)

Assume list is a list of paths relative to head, and append, in place, a '/' to each path which points to a directory.

>>> import dircache
>>> a = dircache.listdir('/')
>>> a = a[:] # Copy the return value so we can change 'a'
>>> a
['bin', 'boot', 'cdrom', 'dev', 'etc', 'floppy', 'home', 'initrd', 'lib', 'lost+
found', 'mnt', 'proc', 'root', 'sbin', 'tmp', 'usr', 'var', 'vmlinuz']
>>> dircache.annotate('/', a)
>>> a
['bin/', 'boot/', 'cdrom/', 'dev/', 'etc/', 'floppy/', 'home/', 'initrd/', 'lib/
', 'lost+found/', 'mnt/', 'proc/', 'root/', 'sbin/', 'tmp/', 'usr/', 'var/', 'vm
linuz']