shutil
has many methods you can use. One of which is:
from shutil import copyfile
copyfile(src, dst)
# 2nd option
copy(src, dst) # dst can be a folder; use copy2() to preserve timestamp
- Copy the contents of the file named
src
to a file named dst
. Both src
and dst
need to be the entire filename of the files, including path.
- 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.
- With
copy
, src
and dst
are path names given as str
s.
Another shutil
method to look at is shutil.copy2()
. It's similar but preserves more metadata (e.g. time stamps).
If you use os.path
operations, use copy
rather than copyfile
. copyfile
will only accept strings.
On Python ≥ 3.5, use pathlib.Path.mkdir
:
from pathlib import Path
Path("/my/directory").mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
For older versions of Python, I see two answers with good qualities, each with a small flaw, so I will give my take on it:
Try os.path.exists
, and consider os.makedirs
for the creation.
import os
if not os.path.exists(directory):
os.makedirs(directory)
As noted in comments and elsewhere, there's a race condition – if the directory is created between the os.path.exists
and the os.makedirs
calls, the os.makedirs
will fail with an OSError
. Unfortunately, blanket-catching OSError
and continuing is not foolproof, as it will ignore a failure to create the directory due to other factors, such as insufficient permissions, full disk, etc.
One option would be to trap the OSError
and examine the embedded error code (see Is there a cross-platform way of getting information from Python’s OSError):
import os, errno
try:
os.makedirs(directory)
except OSError as e:
if e.errno != errno.EEXIST:
raise
Alternatively, there could be a second os.path.exists
, but suppose another created the directory after the first check, then removed it before the second one – we could still be fooled.
Depending on the application, the danger of concurrent operations may be more or less than the danger posed by other factors such as file permissions. The developer would have to know more about the particular application being developed and its expected environment before choosing an implementation.
Modern versions of Python improve this code quite a bit, both by exposing FileExistsError
(in 3.3+)...
try:
os.makedirs("path/to/directory")
except FileExistsError:
# directory already exists
pass
...and by allowing a keyword argument to os.makedirs
called exist_ok
(in 3.2+).
os.makedirs("path/to/directory", exist_ok=True) # succeeds even if directory exists.
Best Answer
you can use a simple helper that will force whatever input you want
you can apply this to anything