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: 
There's nothing preventing you from creating your own function:

```
import os

def listfiles(folder):
    for root, folders, files in os.walk(folder):
        for filename in folders + files:
            yield os.path.join(root, filename)

```

You can use it like so:

```
for filename in listfiles('/etc/'):
    print filename

```
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")

```