How to Walk a Directory Tree in Go (filepath.Walk vs filepath.WalkDir)

File Io

2026-04-17T12:05:42+00:00

Use filepath.WalkDir for faster directory traversal by leveraging fs.DirEntry instead of the deprecated filepath.Walk.

Use filepath.WalkDir instead of filepath.Walk for better performance and modern io/fs integration. WalkDir avoids calling os.Lstat on every entry by using fs.DirEntry, which is significantly faster for large directory trees.

err := filepath.WalkDir("./path", func(path string, d fs.DirEntry, err error) error {
    if err != nil {
        return err
    }
    if d.IsDir() {
        return nil
    }
    // Process file
    return nil
})