scandir, a better directory iterator and faster os.walk() scandir() is a generator version of os.listdir() that returns an iterator over files in a directory, and also exposes the extra information most OSes provide while iterating files in a directory (such as type and stat information). This module also includes a version of os.walk() that uses scandir() to speed it up significantly. NOTE: If you’re using Python version 3.5+, os.scandir() and the speed improvements to os.walk() are already available in the standard library.