Python script to touch files of a particular pattern in all folders of a given name

For combining (1) and (2) you can reverse the sort by only trying if your are under a test directory

Also this is a great use for a generator / map combo to avoid extra loops

import os 
import re

is_xml = re.compile('xml', re.I)
is_test = re.compile('testResults', re.I)

def find_xml_tests(root):
    for current, dirnames, filenames in os.walk(root):
        if is_test.search(current):
            for filename in filter(lambda p: is_xml.search(p),  filenames):
                yield  os.path.normpath(os.path.join(current, filename))

def touch(filename ):
    os.utime(test,(time.time(),time.time()))

map(touch, find_xml_tests('path/to/files'))

Python seems like overkill here: this is surely a job for the shell? Depending on exactly which files you want to touch, then use this:

touch -- */testResults/*.xml

or this:

find . -path '*/testResults/*.xml' -exec touch -- {} \+

You indicated that you are using Windows. But even on Windows, surely a PowerShell script (using Get-ChildItem instead of find and Set-ItemProperty -Name LastWriteTime instead of touch) would be simplest?

import os,glob,time
t = time.time()
def touchy(fpath):
    os.utime(fpath,(t,t))
    return fpath

def findResults(directory = "/"):
    results = [] 
    search_path = os.path.join(directory,"testResults/*.xml")
    for d in filter(os.path.isdir,os.listdir(directory)):   
        results.extend( map(touchy,glob.glob(search_path)) if d == "testResults" else findResults(os.path.join(directory,d))
    return results

is probably about the best you can do if you want python