My Python snippet for walking a file tree

I write a lot of one-use Python scripts for quick analysis or cleaning something up on my disk, and they often involve iterating over a folder full of files. The key function for doing this is os.walk in the standard library, but it’s not quite what I want, so I have a wrapper function I use instead:

import os

def get_file_paths_under(root=".", *, suffix=""):
    """
    Generates the absolute paths to every matching file under ``root``.
    """
    if not os.path.isdir(root):
        raise ValueError(f"Cannot find files under non-existent directory: {root!r}")

    for dirpath, _, filenames in os.walk(root):
        for f in filenames:
            p = os.path.join(dirpath, f)
            
            if os.path.isfile(p) and f.lower().endswith(suffix):
                yield p

for path in get_file_paths_under():

This function gives me a couple of things over just using os.walk: it gives me a single iterator I can loop over, and it constructs the absolute path for me. The ability to filter by suffix is useful too; it gives me a quick way to filter my search. I use this when I’m working in a folder tree with lots of different file types.

for path in get_file_paths_under("notes"):
    ...

for txt_path in get_file_paths_under("notes", suffix=".txt"):
    ...

The body of the function isn’t especially complicated; the only vaguely interesting bit is the ValueError. it’s to help catch silly mistakes when I accidentally pass the name of a file as the input – if you try to os.walk over a file, you get an empty list of results, which can be a bit confusing. (I’m sure there’s a good reason, even if I don’t know what it is.)

An experienced Python programmer could probably write this from scratch in a few minutes, but I use it so often that I like to have it saved. TextExpander inserts this snippet whenever I type py!pth, including both the function and the for loop. I save a few minutes, and I get a version of the function that I know doesn’t have any weird edge cases or silly mistakes.