Question: What is the simplest way to get the full recursive list of files inside a folder with python? I know about `os.walk()`, but it seems overkill for just getting the unfiltered list of all files. Is it really the only option?

Answer: 
`os.walk()` is not overkill by any means. It can generate your list of files and directories in a jiffy:

```
files = [os.path.join(dirpath, filename)
    for (dirpath, dirs, files) in os.walk('.')
    for filename in (dirs + files)]

```

You can turn this into a generator, to only process one path at a time and safe on memory.
You could also use the `find` program itself from Python by using [sh](http://amoffat.github.com/sh/index.html)

```
import sh
text_files = sh.find(".", "-iname", "*.txt")

```