The find utility is probably smarter than the other methods. I know two things to watch out for: sorting the directory entries and calling stat on each entry.

The find utility is probably smarter than the other methods. I know two things to watch out for: sorting the directory entries and calling stat on each entry. You might like to read the rationale section of PEP 471: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0471/ https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0471/