File Modifiaction And Manipulation

How would you scan a dir for a text file and read the text file by date modified, print it to screen having the script scan the directory every 5 seconds for a newer file creadted

Solution 1:

Repeating actions on a timer

You can repeat an action every five seconds by combining an infinite loop with the time.sleep() function, like so:

import timewhile True:
    time.sleep(5)         # wait five seconds
    print (time.time())   # print the time

Remember to have some kind of break condition in here if you need it, otherwise the loop will run forever.

"TypeError: coercing to Unicode: need string or buffer, list found"

Your problem is in the line

Time = time.ctime(os.path.getmtime(contents))

You have provided a list of filenames. The os.path.getmtime function expects one filename at a time. The error message is telling you that it has no idea how to convert a list of filenames into a filename.