Get Every File in a Directory Tree

 1def walk(path, relative = False, dotdirs = False):
 2    '''
 3    Given a 'path', traverses the directory tree and returns every file (every non-directory) found.
 4    If 'relative' is True, the path is not converted into an absolute path.
 5    If 'dotdirs' is True, directories that start with a '.' are included.  
 6    Otherwise they and their contents are excluded.
 7    '''
 8
 9    if not relative:
10        path = os.path.abspath(path)
11        
12        
13    if os.path.isfile(path):
14        return [path]
15        
16    elif os.path.isdir(path):
17        files = []
18        for dirpath, dirnames, filenames in os.walk(path):
19            if not dotdirs:
20                # Modify list in place -- there is probably a better way to do this
21                for dir in dirnames:
22                    if dir.startswith('.'):
23                        dirnames.pop(dirnames.index(dir))
24            
25            files.extend(os.path.join(dirpath, file) for file in filenames)
26        return files
27        
28    else:
29        raise ValueError, 'Not sure how to handle that sort of file.'