using os.walk to generate objects

[Joe Hrbek]

The code below works (in linux), but I'm wondering if there is a
better/easier/cleaner way? It works on directory trees that don't
have a lot of "."s in them or other special characters. I haven't
implemented a good handler for that yet, so if you run this in your
system, choose/make a simple directory structure to use as your root
for os.walk(). Also, you must start from the top most directory
level, like /test. /tmp/test as a root will not work (yet).

I wanted to know if I could use os.walk() to construct an object based
off of a directory tree. So, the following path: "/test/home/user"
would get converted into "test.home.user" and I could then work with
it that way in my python program, attaching attributes to those
"directories" that I could use to keep track of things. This was more
of an exercise in learning than anything, I wanted to see if I could
do it. I've never used "type()" before to create new objects, so
really that was the point. Can I do this an easier way though?

----
import os
from os.path import join, getsize

def remove_hidden(dirlist):
"""For a list containing directory names, remove
any that start with a dot"""
dirlist[:] = [d for d in dirlist if not d.startswith('.')]

def recurse_dir_tree(context,dirs):
"""recurse through tree structure and add attributes
as necessary"""
for directory in dirs:
fixedDir = directory.replace('.','_').lower()
#print ("directory is:%s" % fixedDir)
newAttrObj = type(("%s" % fixedDir),(),{})
if newAttrObj.__name__:
#print newAttrObj.__name__
#print "context is "+context
print "tree."+context
setattr(eval
("tree."+context),newAttrObj.__name__,newAttrObj)

class Tree(object):
def __init__(self,wd):
self.__name__ = wd


pathroot = '/test'
tree = Tree(pathroot)


for root, dirs, files in os.walk(pathroot):
tree.currentRoot = ".".join(map(str,root.split('/')[1:]))
tree.currentRoot = tree.currentRoot.lower()
print "currentRoot:" + tree.currentRoot
if pathroot == root:
#this is the start of the object tree
tree.baseRoot = pathroot.split('/')[1]
newAttrObj = type(("%s" % tree.currentRoot),(),{})
setattr(tree,newAttrObj.__name__,newAttrObj)
#print dirs
remove_hidden(dirs)
#print dirs
if dirs:
recurse_dir_tree(tree.currentRoot,dirs)