Two posts back I wrote about installing GPT4All on my M1 MacBook Pro. At first blush I was impressed, as it seemed to answer the softball questions I asked it correctly and with style. Then I got a little more serious and asked it this question:

write a python program that reads a directoryand prints out everything it finds

To which GPT4All Falcon gave this answer:

Here's an example Python program that uses the`os` module to read a directory and print outeverything it finds:

import os# Set the directory pathdir_path = '/path/to/directory'# Check if the directory existsif not os.path.exists(dir_path):print("Directory does not exist")return# Iterate through all files in the directoryfor file in os.listdir(dir_path):# Check if the file is a directoryif os.path.isdir(os.path.join(dir_path, file)):# If it's a directory, recursively call this functionprint("Directory:", file)print("Files:", os.listdir(os.path.join(dir_path, file)))# Check if the directory is emptyif not os.path.exists(dir_path):print("Directory does not exist")

This program uses the `os.listdir` functionto get a list of all files in the directoryand the `os.path.join` function to constructthe full path for each file.It then calls itself recursively on anydirectories it finds, printing out thedirectory name and its contents.

Let’s examine the Python code. There is a blatant error on line 9. Python does not allow the use of a return outside of a proceedure. If you need to exit a script due to some condition, then you use Python’s exit keyword.

The second problem are lines 19-21. They don’t do anything. The message on line 21 is the same as the message on line 8. If the block of code in lines 19-21 is to determine if the directory is empty then it should say that.

Let’s clean up the code enough to actually work.

#!/usr/bin/env python3import os# Set the directory pathdir_path = '.'# Check if the directory existsif not os.path.exists(dir_path):print("Directory does not exist")exit(1)# Iterate through all files in the directoryfor file in os.listdir(dir_path):# Check if the file is a directoryif os.path.isdir(os.path.join(dir_path, file)):# If it's a directory, recursively call this functionprint("Directory:", file)print("Files:", os.listdir(os.path.join(dir_path, file)))

Now let’s test it. I’ve created some dummy directories and files. Here’s what the utility tree shows.

├── foo│   ├── bar│   │   ├── five│   │   ├── seven│   │   └── six│   ├── four│   ├── one│   ├── three│   └── two├── foo2

Now let’s run our corrected AI code and look at the output.

Directory: fooFiles: ['three', 'one', 'two', 'bar', 'four']Directory: foo2Files: []

It’s unsurprisingly disappointing. There’s a comment on line 15 (16 in the corrected code) that says to “recursively call this function” if a directory is detected. It doesn’t in part because there are no functions, and because the test for a directory doesn’t do anything but print out if it’s a directory.

The code looks like during its learning phase it swept up someone’s Stack Overflow question, but didn’t know enough to look at any answers, assuming there were any. Whatever ideas I might have had to incorporate the Falcon model into anything have been pretty much squelched. I’ll install some others and give them a spin.

Links

ChatGPT Isn’t Coming for Your Coding Job — Wired — https://www.wired.com/story/chatgpt-coding-software-crisis/