which is "better"?

[Gribouillis]

I wonder if it would be better to use the stat module's symbolic constants. This would do a os.stat() call for each path, but I don't know how many system calls your code does

import os
import stat

codes = [
    (stat.S_ISLNK, 'l'),
    (stat.S_ISBLK, 'b'),
    (stat.S_ISCHR, 'c'),
    (stat.S_ISDIR, 'd'),
    (stat.S_ISREG, 'f'),
    (stat.S_ISSOCK, 's'),
    (stat.S_ISFIFO, 'p'),
]

def pathftn(path):
    mode = os.stat(str(path), follow_symlinks=False).st_mode
    for func, letter in codes:
        if func(mode):
            return letter
    return '?'