10.10. shutil — High-level file operations
Source code: Lib/shutil.py
The shutil module offers a number of high-level operations on files and
collections of files. In particular, functions are provided which support file
copying and removal. For operations on individual files, see also the
os module.
Warning
Even the higher-level file copying functions (shutil.copy(),
shutil.copy2()) can’t copy all file metadata.
On POSIX platforms, this means that file owner and group are lost as well
as ACLs. On Mac OS, the resource fork and other metadata are not used.
This means that resources will be lost and file type and creator codes will
not be correct. On Windows, file owners, ACLs and alternate data streams
are not copied.
10.10.1. Directory and files operations
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shutil.copyfileobj(fsrc, fdst[, length])
Copy the contents of the file-like object fsrc to the file-like object fdst.
The integer length, if given, is the buffer size. In particular, a negative
length value means to copy the data without looping over the source data in
chunks; by default the data is read in chunks to avoid uncontrolled memory
consumption. Note that if the current file position of the fsrc object is not
0, only the contents from the current file position to the end of the file will
be copied.
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shutil.copyfile(src, dst)
Copy the contents (no metadata) of the file named src to a file named
dst. dst must be the complete target file name; look at
shutil.copy() for a copy that accepts a target directory path. If
src and dst are the same files, Error is raised.
The destination location must be writable; otherwise, an IOError exception
will be raised. If dst already exists, it will be replaced. Special files
such as character or block devices and pipes cannot be copied with this
function. src and dst are path names given as strings.
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shutil.copymode(src, dst)
Copy the permission bits from src to dst. The file contents, owner, and
group are unaffected. src and dst are path names given as strings.
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shutil.copystat(src, dst)
Copy the permission bits, last access time, last modification time, and flags
from src to dst. The file contents, owner, and group are unaffected. src
and dst are path names given as strings.
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shutil.copy(src, dst)
Copy the file src to the file or directory dst. If dst is a directory, a
file with the same basename as src is created (or overwritten) in the
directory specified. Permission bits are copied. src and dst are path
names given as strings.
-
shutil.copy2(src, dst)
Identical to copy() except that copy2()
also attempts to preserve file metadata.
copy2() uses copystat() to copy the file metadata.
Please see copystat() for more information.
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shutil.ignore_patterns(*patterns)
This factory function creates a function that can be used as a callable for
copytree()’s ignore argument, ignoring files and directories that
match one of the glob-style patterns provided. See the example below.
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shutil.copytree(src, dst, symlinks=False, ignore=None)
Recursively copy an entire directory tree rooted at src. The destination
directory, named by dst, must not already exist; it will be created as
well as missing parent directories. Permissions and times of directories
are copied with copystat(), individual files are copied using
shutil.copy2().
If symlinks is true, symbolic links in the source tree are represented as
symbolic links in the new tree, but the metadata of the original links is NOT
copied; if false or omitted, the contents and metadata of the linked files
are copied to the new tree.
If ignore is given, it must be a callable that will receive as its
arguments the directory being visited by copytree(), and a list of its
contents, as returned by os.listdir(). Since copytree() is
called recursively, the ignore callable will be called once for each
directory that is copied. The callable must return a sequence of directory
and file names relative to the current directory (i.e. a subset of the items
in its second argument); these names will then be ignored in the copy
process. ignore_patterns() can be used to create such a callable that
ignores names based on glob-style patterns.
If exception(s) occur, an Error is raised with a list of reasons.
The source code for this should be considered an example rather than the
ultimate tool.
Changed in version 2.3: Error is raised if any exceptions occur during copying, rather than
printing a message.
Changed in version 2.5: Create intermediate directories needed to create dst, rather than raising an
error. Copy permissions and times of directories using copystat().
Changed in version 2.6: Added the ignore argument to be able to influence what is being copied.
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shutil.rmtree(path[, ignore_errors[, onerror]])
Delete an entire directory tree; path must point to a directory (but not a
symbolic link to a directory). If ignore_errors is true, errors resulting
from failed removals will be ignored; if false or omitted, such errors are
handled by calling a handler specified by onerror or, if that is omitted,
they raise an exception.
If onerror is provided, it must be a callable that accepts three
parameters: function, path, and excinfo. The first parameter,
function, is the function which raised the exception; it will be
os.path.islink(), os.listdir(), os.remove() or
os.rmdir(). The second parameter, path, will be the path name passed
to function. The third parameter, excinfo, will be the exception
information return by sys.exc_info(). Exceptions raised by onerror
will not be caught.
Changed in version 2.6: Explicitly check for path being a symbolic link and raise OSError
in that case.
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shutil.move(src, dst)
Recursively move a file or directory (src) to another location (dst).
If the destination is an existing directory, then src is moved inside that
directory. If the destination already exists but is not a directory, it may
be overwritten depending on os.rename() semantics.
If the destination is on the current filesystem, then os.rename() is
used. Otherwise, src is copied (using shutil.copy2()) to dst and
then removed.
-
exception
shutil.Error
This exception collects exceptions that are raised during a multi-file
operation. For copytree(), the exception argument is a list of 3-tuples
(srcname, dstname, exception).
10.10.1.1. copytree example
This example is the implementation of the copytree() function, described
above, with the docstring omitted. It demonstrates many of the other functions
provided by this module.
def copytree(src, dst, symlinks=False, ignore=None):
names = os.listdir(src)
if ignore is not None:
ignored_names = ignore(src, names)
else:
ignored_names = set()
os.makedirs(dst)
errors = []
for name in names:
if name in ignored_names:
continue
srcname = os.path.join(src, name)
dstname = os.path.join(dst, name)
try:
if symlinks and os.path.islink(srcname):
linkto = os.readlink(srcname)
os.symlink(linkto, dstname)
elif os.path.isdir(srcname):
copytree(srcname, dstname, symlinks, ignore)
else:
copy2(srcname, dstname)
# XXX What about devices, sockets etc.?
except (IOError, os.error) as why:
errors.append((srcname, dstname, str(why)))
# catch the Error from the recursive copytree so that we can
# continue with other files
except Error as err:
errors.extend(err.args[0])
try:
copystat(src, dst)
except WindowsError:
# can't copy file access times on Windows
pass
except OSError as why:
errors.extend((src, dst, str(why)))
if errors:
raise Error(errors)
Another example that uses the ignore_patterns() helper:
from shutil import copytree, ignore_patterns
copytree(source, destination, ignore=ignore_patterns('*.pyc', 'tmp*'))
This will copy everything except .pyc files and files or directories whose
name starts with tmp.
Another example that uses the ignore argument to add a logging call:
from shutil import copytree
import logging
def _logpath(path, names):
logging.info('Working in %s' % path)
return [] # nothing will be ignored
copytree(source, destination, ignore=_logpath)
10.10.2. Archiving operations
High-level utilities to create and read compressed and archived files are also
provided. They rely on the zipfile and tarfile modules.
-
shutil.make_archive(base_name, format[, root_dir[, base_dir[, verbose[, dry_run[, owner[, group[, logger]]]]]]])
Create an archive file (eg. zip or tar) and returns its name.
base_name is the name of the file to create, including the path, minus
any format-specific extension. format is the archive format: one of
“zip” (if the zlib module or external zip executable is
available), “tar”, “gztar” (if the zlib module is available), or
“bztar” (if the bz2 module is available).
root_dir is a directory that will be the root directory of the
archive; ie. we typically chdir into root_dir before creating the
archive.
base_dir is the directory where we start archiving from;
ie. base_dir will be the common prefix of all files and
directories in the archive.
root_dir and base_dir both default to the current directory.
owner and group are used when creating a tar archive. By default,
uses the current owner and group.
logger must be an object compatible with PEP 282, usually an instance of
logging.Logger.
-
shutil.get_archive_formats()
Return a list of supported formats for archiving.
Each element of the returned sequence is a tuple (name, description).
By default shutil provides these formats:
- zip: ZIP file (if the
zlib module or external zip
executable is available).
- tar: uncompressed tar file.
- gztar: gzip’ed tar-file (if the
zlib module is available).
- bztar: bzip2’ed tar-file (if the
bz2 module is available).
You can register new formats or provide your own archiver for any existing
formats, by using register_archive_format().
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shutil.register_archive_format(name, function[, extra_args[, description]])
Register an archiver for the format name. function is a callable that
will be used to invoke the archiver.
If given, extra_args is a sequence of (name, value) that will be
used as extra keywords arguments when the archiver callable is used.
description is used by get_archive_formats() which returns the
list of archivers. Defaults to an empty list.
-
shutil.unregister_archive_format(name)
Remove the archive format name from the list of supported formats.
10.10.2.1. Archiving example
In this example, we create a gzip’ed tar-file archive containing all files
found in the .ssh directory of the user:
>>> from shutil import make_archive
>>> import os
>>> archive_name = os.path.expanduser(os.path.join('~', 'myarchive'))
>>> root_dir = os.path.expanduser(os.path.join('~', '.ssh'))
>>> make_archive(archive_name, 'gztar', root_dir)
'/Users/tarek/myarchive.tar.gz'
The resulting archive contains:
$ tar -tzvf /Users/tarek/myarchive.tar.gz
drwx------ tarek/staff 0 2010-02-01 16:23:40 ./
-rw-r--r-- tarek/staff 609 2008-06-09 13:26:54 ./authorized_keys
-rwxr-xr-x tarek/staff 65 2008-06-09 13:26:54 ./config
-rwx------ tarek/staff 668 2008-06-09 13:26:54 ./id_dsa
-rwxr-xr-x tarek/staff 609 2008-06-09 13:26:54 ./id_dsa.pub
-rw------- tarek/staff 1675 2008-06-09 13:26:54 ./id_rsa
-rw-r--r-- tarek/staff 397 2008-06-09 13:26:54 ./id_rsa.pub
-rw-r--r-- tarek/staff 37192 2010-02-06 18:23:10 ./known_hosts