refactor: extract code as method from do_import This started by trying to fix a resource error where the os.scandir iterator was not closed for some reason (it should have been exhausted and close). While the ResourceWarning is fixed with: with os.scandir() as ...: indented existing code it breaks under python2. Trying a python2 friendly option: dirscan = os.scandir() ... if hasattr(dirscan,'close'): dirscan.close() doesn't fix the resource warning. Using the 'with os.scandir()...' indented a nested block too far so I extracted it into another method. It is only this method that survives 8-(.