["python","ftp","portability"]
Using Python's ftplib to get a directory listing, portably

You can use ftplib for full FTP support in Python. However the preferred way of getting a directory listing is: # File: ftplib-example-1.py import ftplib ftp = ftplib.FTP("www.python.org") ftp.login("anonymous", "ftplib-example-1") data = [] ftp.dir(data.append) ftp.quit() for line in data: print "-", line Which yields: $ python ftplib-example-1.py - total 34 - drwxrwxr-x 11 root 4127 512 Sep 14 14:18 . - drwxrwxr-x 11 root 4127 512 Sep 14 14:18 .. - drwxrwxr-x 2 root 4127 512 Sep 13 15:18 RCS - lrwxrwxrwx 1 root bin 11 Jun 29 14:34 README -> welcome.msg - drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 512 May 19 1998 bin - drwxr-sr-x 3 root 1400 512 Jun 9 1997 dev - drwxrwxr-- 2 root 4127 512 Feb 8 1998 dup - drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 512 May 19 1998 etc ... I guess the idea is to parse the results to get the directory listing. However this listing is directly dependent on the FTP server's way of formatting the list. It would be very messy to write code for this having to anticipate all the different ways FTP servers might format this list. Is there a portable way to get an array filled with the directory listing? (The array should only have the folder names.)
Try using ftp.nlst(dir). However, note that if the folder is empty, it might throw an error: files = [] try: files = ftp.nlst() except ftplib.error_perm as resp: if str(resp) == "550 No files found": print "No files in this directory" else: raise for f in files: print f