How do I copy a file in Python?
How do I copy a file in Python?
Accepted Answer
shutil
has many methods you can use. One of which is:
from shutil import copyfile
copyfile(src, dst)
- Copy the contents of the file named src to a file named dst.
- 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 strings.
If you use os.path
operations, use copy
rather than copyfile
. copyfile
will only accept strings.
Popular Answer
┌──────────────────┬────────┬───────────┬───────┬────────────────┐
│ Function │ Copies │ Copies │Can use│ Destination │
│ │metadata│permissions│buffer │may be directory│
├──────────────────┼────────┼───────────┼───────┼────────────────┤
│shutil.copy │ No │ Yes │ No │ Yes │
│shutil.copyfile │ No │ No │ No │ No │
│shutil.copy2 │ Yes │ Yes │ No │ Yes │
│shutil.copyfileobj│ No │ No │ Yes │ No │
└──────────────────┴────────┴───────────┴───────┴────────────────┘
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copy2(src,dst)
is often more useful than copyfile(src,dst)
because:
- it allows
dst
to be a directory (instead of the complete target filename), in which case the basename ofsrc
is used for creating the new file; - it preserves the original modification and access info (mtime and atime) in the file metadata (however, this comes with a slight overhead).
Here is a short example:
import shutil
shutil.copy2('/src/dir/file.ext', '/dst/dir/newname.ext') # complete target filename given
shutil.copy2('/src/file.ext', '/dst/dir') # target filename is /dst/dir/file.ext
You can use one of the copy functions from the shutil
package:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Function preserves supports accepts copies other permissions directory dest. file obj metadata ―――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――― shutil.copy ✔ ✔ ☐ ☐ shutil.copy2 ✔ ✔ ☐ ✔ shutil.copyfile ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ shutil.copyfileobj ☐ ☐ ✔ ☐ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Example:
import shutil
shutil.copy('/etc/hostname', '/var/tmp/testhostname')
In Python, you can copy the files using
shutil
moduleos
modulesubprocess
module
import os
import shutil
import subprocess
1) Copying files using shutil
module
shutil.copyfile
signature
shutil.copyfile(src_file, dest_file, *, follow_symlinks=True)
# example
shutil.copyfile('source.txt', 'destination.txt')
shutil.copy
signature
shutil.copy(src_file, dest_file, *, follow_symlinks=True)
# example
shutil.copy('source.txt', 'destination.txt')
shutil.copy2
signature
shutil.copy2(src_file, dest_file, *, follow_symlinks=True)
# example
shutil.copy2('source.txt', 'destination.txt')
shutil.copyfileobj
signature
shutil.copyfileobj(src_file_object, dest_file_object[, length])
# example
file_src = 'source.txt'
f_src = open(file_src, 'rb')
file_dest = 'destination.txt'
f_dest = open(file_dest, 'wb')
shutil.copyfileobj(f_src, f_dest)
2) Copying files using os
module
os.popen
signature
os.popen(cmd[, mode[, bufsize]])
# example
# In Unix/Linux
os.popen('cp source.txt destination.txt')
# In Windows
os.popen('copy source.txt destination.txt')
os.system
signature
os.system(command)
# In Linux/Unix
os.system('cp source.txt destination.txt')
# In Windows
os.system('copy source.txt destination.txt')
3) Copying files using subprocess
module
subprocess.call
signature
subprocess.call(args, *, stdin=None, stdout=None, stderr=None, shell=False)
# example (WARNING: setting `shell=True` might be a security-risk)
# In Linux/Unix
status = subprocess.call('cp source.txt destination.txt', shell=True)
# In Windows
status = subprocess.call('copy source.txt destination.txt', shell=True)
subprocess.check_output
signature
subprocess.check_output(args, *, stdin=None, stderr=None, shell=False, universal_newlines=False)
# example (WARNING: setting `shell=True` might be a security-risk)
# In Linux/Unix
status = subprocess.check_output('cp source.txt destination.txt', shell=True)
# In Windows
status = subprocess.check_output('copy source.txt destination.txt', shell=True)
Copying a file is a relatively straightforward operation as shown by the examples below, but you should instead use the shutil stdlib module for that.
def copyfileobj_example(source, dest, buffer_size=1024*1024):
"""
Copy a file from source to dest. source and dest
must be file-like objects, i.e. any object with a read or
write method, like for example StringIO.
"""
while True:
copy_buffer = source.read(buffer_size)
if not copy_buffer:
break
dest.write(copy_buffer)
If you want to copy by filename you could do something like this:
def copyfile_example(source, dest):
# Beware, this example does not handle any edge cases!
with open(source, 'rb') as src, open(dest, 'wb') as dst:
copyfileobj_example(src, dst)
Use the shutil module.
copyfile(src, dst)
Copy the contents of the file named src to a file named dst. 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.
Take a look at filesys for all the file and directory handling functions available in standard Python modules.