This script is always returning unknown. Even if there are files and directory inside my root folder?

rishi kanwar :

for item in os.listdir("/root"):
    if os.path.isfile(item):
        print(item + "is a file")
    elif os.path.isdir(item):
        print(item + "is a dir")
    else:
        print("Unknown")

Demian Wolf :

According to the for loop, you are trying to check every file from the /root directory, not from the current one. But os.listdir("/root) returns only the filenames of files that are in the /root directory without their full paths (e.g. "my_file.txt" instead of "/root/my_file.txt"). And os.path.isfile(...) and os.path.isdir(...) require the full paths as their args. So, when you call os.path.isfile(item) or os.path.isdir(item) it checks whether the item exists in the current directory, not the /root directory.

Use os.path.join(path, *paths) to get the full paths for your items, store it in the full_path variable inside the loop and throw it to the os.path.isdir(...) and os.path.isfile(...) instead of the item.
Here is an example:

for item in os.listdir("/root"):
    full_path = os.path.join("/root", item)
    if os.path.isfile(full_path):
        print(item + " is a file")
    elif os.path.isdir(full_path):
        print(item + " is a dir")
    else:
        print("Unknown")