How to Copy an Entire Directory of Files into an Existing Directory Using Python

How do I copy an entire directory of files into an existing directory using Python?

This limitation of the standard shutil.copytree seems arbitrary and annoying. Workaround:

import os, shutil
def copytree(src, dst, symlinks=False, ignore=None):
    for item in os.listdir(src):
        s = os.path.join(src, item)
        d = os.path.join(dst, item)
        if os.path.isdir(s):
            shutil.copytree(s, d, symlinks, ignore)
        else:
            shutil.copy2(s, d)

Note that it's not entirely consistent with the standard copytree:

it doesn't honor symlinks and ignore parameters for the root directory of the src tree;
it doesn't raise shutil.Error for errors at the root level of src;
in case of errors during copying of a subtree, it will raise shutil.Error for that subtree instead of trying to copy other subtrees and raising single combined shutil.Error.

Python. Copy Files and Folders to existing directory

You can use the copytree function from the shutil package https://docs.python.org/3/library/shutil.html#shutil.copytree.

from shutil import copytree

src_path = "path/of/your/source/dir"
dest_path = "path/of/your/destination/dir"

copytree(src_path, dest_path, dirs_exist_ok=True)

The dirs_exist_ok=True parameter is useful if the dest_path already exists, and you want to overwrite the existing files.

How to copy a folder into an existing folder using python

You can use the copytree() method. Because it copy the actual content, you need to create the folder first with os.mkdir

import shutil
import os

directory = "foo"
path = os.path.join(parent_dir, directory)    
os.mkdir(path)

source_dir = r"C:\foo"
destination_dir = r"C:\bar\foo"
shutil.copytree(source_dir, destination_dir)

Some documentation

Another solution is to use directly the command line and launching the copy/paste command from there

You can do it by importing the os import os and then with os.system(my_command) where my_command is the string containing the actual command. In linux you can use cp -r directory-1 directory-2 (to copy a directory, you need to add the -r (or -R) flag—which is shorthand for --recursive)

os.system('cp -r C:\foo C:\bar')

Copy file or directories recursively in Python

I suggest you first call shutil.copytree, and if an exception is thrown, then retry with shutil.copy.

import shutil, errno

def copyanything(src, dst):
    try:
        shutil.copytree(src, dst)
    except OSError as exc: # python >2.5
        if exc.errno in (errno.ENOTDIR, errno.EINVAL):
            shutil.copy(src, dst)
        else: raise

Copy directory contents into a directory with python

I found this code working which is part of the standard library:

from distutils.dir_util import copy_tree

# copy subdirectory example
from_directory = "/a/b/c"
to_directory = "/x/y/z"

copy_tree(from_directory, to_directory)

Reference:

Python 2: https://docs.python.org/2/distutils/apiref.html#distutils.dir_util.copy_tree
Python 3: https://docs.python.org/3/distutils/apiref.html#distutils.dir_util.copy_tree

How to copy files?

shutil has many methods you can use. One of which is:

import shutil

shutil.copyfile(src, dst)

# 2nd option
shutil.copy(src, dst)  # dst can be a folder; use shutil.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 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.

Moving all files from one directory to another using Python

Try this:

import shutil
import os
    
source_dir = '/path/to/source_folder'
target_dir = '/path/to/dest_folder'
    
file_names = os.listdir(source_dir)
    
for file_name in file_names:
    shutil.move(os.path.join(source_dir, file_name), target_dir)