[FIXED] Read multiple text files, search few strings , replace and write in python

Issue

I have 10s of text files in my local directory named something like test1, test2, test3, and so on. I would like to read all these files, search few strings in the files, replace them by other strings and finally save back into my directory in such a way that something like newtest1, newtest2, newtest3, and so on.

For instance, if there was a single file, I would have done following:

#Read the file
with open('H:\\Yugeen\\TestFiles\\test1.txt', 'r') as file :
filedata = file.read()

#Replace the target string
filedata = filedata.replace('32-83 Days', '32-60 Days')

#write the file out again
with open('H:\\Yugeen\\TestFiles\\newtest1.txt', 'w') as file:
file.write(filedata)

Is there any way that I can achieve this in python?

Solution

If you use Pyhton 3 you can use the scandir in os library.
Python 3 docs: os.scandir

With that you can get the directory entries.
with os.scandir('H:\\Yugeen\\TestFiles') as it:
Then loop over these entries and your code could look something like this.
Notice I changed the path in your code to the entry object path.

import os

# Get the directory entries
with os.scandir('H:\\Yugeen\\TestFiles') as it:
    # Iterate over directory entries
    for entry in it:
        # If not file continue to next iteration
        # This is no need if you are 100% sure there is only files in the directory
        if not entry.is_file():
            continue

        # Read the file
        with open(entry.path, 'r') as file:
            filedata = file.read()

        # Replace the target string
        filedata = filedata.replace('32-83 Days', '32-60 Days')

        # write the file out again
        with open(entry.path, 'w') as file:
            file.write(filedata)

If you use Pyhton 2 you can use listdir. (also applicable for python 3)
Python 2 docs: os.listdir

In this case same code structure. But you also need to handle the full path to file since listdir will only return the filename.

Answered By - akane