Shutil Module

Introduction

Shutil provides high-level file operations like copying and archiving.

Copy Operations

import shutil

# Copy file (metadata)
shutil.copy("source.txt", "dest.txt")

# Copy with permissions
shutil.copy2("source.txt", "dest.txt")

# Copy directory
shutil.copytree("src_dir", "dst_dir")

# Copy file to directory
shutil.copy("file.txt", "dest_dir/")

Move and Remove

import shutil

# Move file or directory
shutil.move("source", "dest")

# Remove directory tree
shutil.rmtree("directory")

# Make archive
shutil.make_archive("backup", "zip", "directory")

Disk Usage

import shutil

# Get disk usage
usage = shutil.disk_usage("/")
print(usage.total, usage.used, usage.free)

# Find largest files
total, used, free = shutil.disk_usage(".")

Practice Problems

1. Create backup of directory
2. Implement recursive file copier
3. Compress directory to tar
4. Find duplicate files
5. Clean up old files by age