Hands on the Python module shutil

Things on this page are fragmentary and immature notes/thoughts of the author. Please read with your own judgement!

https://docs.python.org/3/library/shutil.html

import shutil

Copy Files¶

copy2 is the preferred function to copy files as it is more flexible (than copy) and also preserve file metadata (compared to copyfile).

copyfileobj¶

shutil.copy2 siliently overwrite the destination file if it already exists, which is consistent with the behavior of the cpcomamnd in Linux/Unix.

!touch abc

!echo "testing" > test

shutil.copy2("test", "abc")

'abc'

!cat abc

testing

shutil.copytree¶

https://docs.python.org/3/library/shutil.html#shutil.copytree

shutil.copytree copies the content of the source directory to the destination directory.

!rm -rf test1 && mkdir -p test1 && touch test1/1.txt && ls test1/

1.txt

!rm -rf test2 && mkdir -p test2 && touch test2/2.txt && ls test2/

2.txt

shutil.copytree("test1/", "test2/", dirs_exist_ok=True)

'test2/'

!ls test2/

1.txt  2.txt

Below is an example of copying ~/.ssh to another location /tmp/ssh but skipping sockets.

def _ignore_socket(dir_, files):
    dir_ = Path(dir_)
    return [file for file in files if (dir_ / file).is_socket()]


shutil.copytree(Path.home() / ".ssh", "/tmp/ssh", ignore=_ignore_socket)

Hands on the Python module shutil

Copy Files¶

copyfileobj¶

copyfile¶

copymode¶

copystat¶

copy¶

shutil.copy2¶

shutil.copytree¶