Print number of occurrences of any items in a list in paths

I am using os.walk to identify paths in a generic source directory (SRC) that contain any strings in my_list:

SRC = '/User/dir_1/'

my_list = ["dog", "cat", "mouse", "bird"]

for dirpath, dirnames, filenames in os.walk(SRC):
    for folders in dirnames:
        for x in my_list:
            if x in folders:
                source_path = os.path.join(dirpath, folders)

And let’s say that print(source_path) gives the following:

/User/dir_1/cat_test/
/User/dir_1/cat_test/bird_results/
/User/dir_1/dir_2/dog_test/
/User/dir_1/dir_2/dog_test/cat_results/
/User/dir_1/mouse_test/
/User/dir_1/mouse_test/mouse_results/
/User/dir_1/unknown_test/dog_results/
/User/dir_1/bird_files/
/User/dir_1/bird_files/bird_a_files/
/User/dir_1/bird_files/bird_b_files/

My goal is to shutil.move my source_path’s, but since, for example, moving /User/dir_1/bird_files/ and then trying to move /User/dir_1/bird_files/bird_a_files/ will result in a FileNotFound Error, I want to filter my source_path’s to include those with only 1 occurrence of any string in my_list, such that my source_path’s are:

/User/dir_1/cat_test/
/User/dir_1/dir_2/dog_test/
/User/dir_1/mouse_test/
/User/dir_1/unknown_test/dog_results/
/User/dir_1/bird_files/

I have tried source_path.count(x) == 1, but that iterates through my_list as opposed to counting any x in my_list, such that my output is (for example):

/User/dir_1/dir_2/dog_test/cat_results/ count == 1 (for dog)
/User/dir_1/dir_2/dog_test/cat_results/ count == 1 (for cat)
/User/dir_1/dir_2/dog_test/cat_results/ count == 0 (for mouse)
/User/dir_1/dir_2/dog_test/cat_results/ count == 0 (for bird)

but I want to see (for example):

/User/dir_1/dir_2/dog_test/cat_results/ count == 2 (for any x in my_list)

Which would allow me to filter out any source_path with count != 1

Answer

Use a comprehension to filter by count, then sum the result (True is cast to 1) to get the “any” behavior.

paths = """/User/dir_1/cat_test/
/User/dir_1/cat_test/bird_results/
/User/dir_1/dir_2/dog_test/
/User/dir_1/dir_2/dog_test/cat_results/
/User/dir_1/mouse_test/
/User/dir_1/mouse_test/mouse_results/
/User/dir_1/unknown_test/dog_results/
/User/dir_1/bird_files/
/User/dir_1/bird_files/bird_a_files/
/User/dir_1/bird_files/bird_b_files/""".split()


my_list = ["dog", "cat", "mouse", "bird"]

out = []
for path in paths:
    if sum(True for term in my_list if path.count(term) == 1) == 1:
        out.append(path)

print(*out, sep='n')

Output

/User/dir_1/cat_test/
/User/dir_1/dir_2/dog_test/
/User/dir_1/mouse_test/
/User/dir_1/unknown_test/dog_results/
/User/dir_1/bird_files/

---

EDIT: From the comment, a os.walk approach.

Idea: remove terms from the dirnames parameter

Remark: I used as filtering condition (see comment in the code) the method substring is contained in string which is quite poor. In this special case a more robust one could be d.startswith(c). For more flexibility use a regex-like solution.

import os


constraints = 'dog', 'cat', 'mouse', 'bird'

wdir = './User' # your reference directory
res = []
for path, dirs, _ in os.walk(wdir, topdown=True):
    # local to each directory's content
    counter = dict.fromkeys(constraints, False)
    dirs_to_skip = []
    
    # filter by constraint
    for c in constraints:
        for d in dirs:
            if c in d: # <-- filter condition!
                if not counter[c]: # 1st match
                    counter[c] = True
                    res.append(os.path.join(path, d))

                dirs_to_skip.append(d)
    
    # remove matched paths          
    for d in dirs_to_skip:
        dirs.remove(d)

print(*res, sep='n')