How can a file be copied

Question

How do I copy a file in Python   I couldn t find anything under os

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from subprocess import call call  cp -p  lt file gt   lt file gt    shell True

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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 of src 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

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Function Copiesmetadata Copiespermissions Uses file object Destinationmay 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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open destination   wb   write open source   rb   read      Open the source file in read mode  and write to destination file in write mode

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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

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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 strs   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

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You could use os system  cp nameoffilegeneratedbyprogram  otherdirectory     or as I did it     os system  cp    rawfile     rawdata dat     where rawfile is the name that I had generated inside the program   This is a Linux only solution

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Similar to the accepted answer  the following code block might come in handy if you also want to make sure to create any  non-existent  folders in the path to the destination  from os import path  makedirs from shutil import copyfile makedirs path dirname path abspath destination path    exist ok True  copyfile source path  destination path   As the accepted answers notes  these lines will overwrite any file which exists at the destination path  so sometimes it might be useful to also add  if not path exists destination path   before this code block

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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

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Python provides in-built functions for easily copying files using the Operating System Shell utilities   Following command is used to Copy File  shutil copy src dst    Following command is used to Copy File with MetaData Information  shutil copystat src dst

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In Python  you can copy the files using  shutil module os module subprocess 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

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Here is a simple way to do it  without any module  It s similar to this answer  but has the benefit to also work if it s a big file that doesn t fit in RAM  with open  sourcefile    rb   as f  open  destfile    wb   as g      while True          block   f read 16 1024 1024     work by blocks of 16 MB         if not block     end of file             break         g write block   Since we re writing a new file  it does not preserve the modification time  etc  We can then use os utime for this if needed

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In case you ve come this far down  The answer is that you need the entire path and file name import os  shutil copy os path join old dir  file   os path join new dir  file

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As of Python 3 5 you can do the following for small files  ie  text files  small jpegs    from pathlib import Path  source   Path     path to my file txt   destination   Path     path where i want to store it txt   destination write bytes source read bytes      write bytes will overwrite whatever was at the destination s location

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For small files and using only python built-ins  you can use the following one-liner   with open source   rb   as src  open dest   wb   as dst  dst write src read      As   maxschlepzig mentioned in the comments below  this is not optimal way for applications where the file is too large or when memory is critical  thus Swati s answer should be preferred

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For large files  what I did was read the file line by line and read each line into an array  Then  once the array reached a certain size  append it to a new file    for line in open  file txt    r        list append line      if len list     1000000           output writelines list          del list

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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

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Firstly  I made an exhaustive cheatsheet of shutil methods for your reference   shutil methods     copy    shutil copyfileobj              shutil copyfile              shutil copymode              shutil copystat              shutil copy              shutil copy2              shutil copytree       move    shutil rmtree             shutil move       exception     exception shutil SameFileError                     exception shutil Error      others    shutil disk usage                 shutil chown                 shutil which                 shutil ignore patterns        Secondly  explain methods of copy in exmaples         shutil copyfileobj fsrc  fdst   length   manipulate opened objects      In  3   src      Documents Head First SQL pdf  In  4   dst      desktop  In  5   shutil copyfileobj src  dst  AttributeError   str  object has no attribute  read   copy the file object In  7   with open src   rb   as f1 open os path join dst  test pdf     wb   as f2                shutil copyfileobj f1  f2  In  8   os stat os path join dst  test pdf    Out 8   os stat result st mode 33188  st ino 8598319475  st dev 16777220  st nlink 1  st uid 501  st gid 20  st size 13507926  st atime 1516067347  st mtime 1516067335  st ctime 1516067345          shutil copyfile src  dst     follow symlinks True   Copy and rename      In  9   shutil copyfile src  dst  IsADirectoryError   Errno 21  Is a directory    desktop   so dst should be a filename instead of a directory name         shutil copy    Copy without preseving the metadata      In  10   shutil copy src  dst  Out 10     desktop Head First SQL pdf   check their metadata In  25   os stat src  Out 25   os stat result st mode 33188  st ino 597749  st dev 16777220  st nlink 1  st uid 501  st gid 20  st size 13507926  st atime 1516066425  st mtime 1493698739  st ctime 1514871215  In  26   os stat os path join dst   Head First SQL pdf    Out 26   os stat result st mode 33188  st ino 8598313736  st dev 16777220  st nlink 1  st uid 501  st gid 20  st size 13507926  st atime 1516066427  st mtime 1516066425  st ctime 1516066425    st atime st mtime st ctime changed         shutil copy2    Copy with preseving the metadata      In  30   shutil copy2 src  dst  Out 30     desktop Head First SQL pdf  In  31   os stat src  Out 31   os stat result st mode 33188  st ino 597749  st dev 16777220  st nlink 1  st uid 501  st gid 20  st size 13507926  st atime 1516067055  st mtime 1493698739  st ctime 1514871215  In  32   os stat os path join dst   Head First SQL pdf    Out 32   os stat result st mode 33188  st ino 8598313736  st dev 16777220  st nlink 1  st uid 501  st gid 20  st size 13507926  st atime 1516067063  st mtime 1493698739  st ctime 1516067055    Preseved st mtime         shutil copytree        Recursively copy an entire directory tree rooted at src  returning the destination directory

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Directory and File copy example - From Tim Golden s Python Stuff   http   timgolden me uk python win32 how do i copy-a-file html  import os import shutil import tempfile  filename1   tempfile mktemp    txt   open  filename1   w   close    filename2   filename1     copy  print filename1     gt    filename2  shutil copy  filename1  filename2   if os path isfile  filename2   print  Success   dirname1   tempfile mktemp    dir   os mkdir  dirname1  dirname2   dirname1     copy  print dirname1     gt    dirname2  shutil copytree  dirname1  dirname2   if os path isdir  dirname2   print  Success

[python] How can a file be copied?

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