tion: if you pass a relative pathname for top, don't change the current working directory between resumptions of walk. walk never changes the current directory, and assumes that the client doesn't either. Example: import os from os.path import join, getsize for root, dirs, files in os.walk('python/Lib/email'): print(root, "consumes ") print(sum(getsize(join(root, name)) for name in files), end=" ") print("bytes in", len(files), "non-directory files") if 'CVS' in dirs: dirs.remove('CVS') # don't visit CVS directories z