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Fast parallel directory walking for Python, powered by Rust.

• Find the repo here.
• Read the docs here.

Features

• 🚀 Fast: Uses the rust ignore crate for fast directory traversal.
• ⚡ Parallel: Multi-threaded directory traversal.
• 🎯 Smart filtering: Built-in support for .gitignore, hidden files and glob patterns.
• 🛡️ Error handling: Flexible error handling with ignore, raise and yield modes.
• ✅ Robust: Built on the battle-tested ignore crate (used by ripgrep) and includes a comprehensive test suite covering multiple platforms.
• 🔒 Type-safe: Full type hints.

Installation

pip install powerwalk

Quick Start

import powerwalk

# Find all Python files (errors ignored by default)
for entry in powerwalk.walk(".", filter="**/*.py"):
    if entry.is_file:
        print(entry.path)

Feature Details

🚀 Fast

powerwalk leverages Rust's ignore crate, which is the same library used by ripgrep for blazing-fast file traversal. This means you get production-grade performance for scanning large directory trees.

⚡ Parallel

Directory traversal is performed in parallel across multiple threads, significantly speeding up operations on large codebases. The number of threads can be configured via the threads parameter, or set to 0 (default) to automatically use a number based on your CPU count.

# Use 8 threads for traversal
for entry in powerwalk.walk(".", threads=8):
    print(entry.path)

🎯 Smart Filtering

powerwalk respects common ignore patterns out of the box:

• .gitignore files (via respect_git_ignore=True, default)
• Global gitignore (via respect_global_git_ignore=True, default)
• .git/info/exclude (via respect_git_exclude=True, default)
• .ignore files (via respect_ignore=True, default)
• Hidden files (via ignore_hidden=True, default)

You can also use glob patterns to filter or exclude specific files:

# Find all Python and JavaScript files, excluding tests
for entry in powerwalk.walk(
    ".",
    filter=["**/*.py", "**/*.js"],
    exclude=["**/test_*", "**/*_test.py"],
):
    print(entry.path)

# Control ignore behavior
for entry in powerwalk.walk(
    ".",
    ignore_hidden=False,  # Include hidden files
    respect_git_ignore=False,  # Don't respect .gitignore
):
    print(entry.path)

🛡️ Error Handling

powerwalk offers three modes for handling errors during traversal:

on_error="ignore" (default) - Silently skip errors and only yield successful entries:

for entry in powerwalk.walk(".", on_error="ignore"):
    print(entry.path)  # Only successful entries

on_error="raise" - Raise an exception on the first error:

try:
    for entry in powerwalk.walk(".", on_error="raise"):
        print(entry.path)
except (FileNotFoundError, PermissionError, OSError) as e:
    print(f"Traversal failed: {e}")

on_error="yield" - Yield both successful entries and errors:

for result in powerwalk.walk(".", on_error="yield"):
    match result:
        case powerwalk.DirEntry():
            print(f"File: {result.path}")
        case powerwalk.Error():
            match result.kind:
                case powerwalk.ErrorKind.PermissionDenied:
                    print(f"Permission denied: {result.message}")
                case powerwalk.ErrorKind.NotFound:
                    print(f"Not found: {result.message}")
                case powerwalk.ErrorKind.FilesystemLoop:
                    print(f"Filesystem loop: {result.message}")
                case _:
                    print(f"Error: {result.message}")