MODULE 4- CHAPTER 1- ORGANIZING FILES

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the shutil module
• The shutil (or shell utilities) module has functions to let you
copy, move, rename, and delete files in your Python programs.
• To use the shutil functions, you will first need to use import
shutil.

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Copying Files and Folders
• The shutil module provides functions for copying files, as well as entire
folders.
• Calling shutil.copy(source, destination) will copy the file at the
path source to the folder at the path destination.
• If destination is a filename, that filename will be used as the new name
of the copied file.

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• The first shutil.copy() call copies the file at
C:\Users\Al\spam.txt to the folder C:\Users\Al\some_folder.

• The function returns the path of the newly copied file:

'C:\\Users\\Al\\some_folder\\spam.txt‘

• Second shutil.copy() also copies the file at C:\Users\Al\eggs.txt

to the folder C:\Users\Al\some_folder but gives the copied file
the name eggs2.txt.

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• shutil.copy() will copy a single file.
• shutil.copytree() will copy an entire folder and every folder and file
contained in it.
• shutil.copytree(source, destination) will copy the folder at the
path source, along with all of its files and subfolders, to the folder at
the path destination.

• The shutil.copytree() call creates a new folder named spam_backup

with the same content as the original spam folder
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 Moving and Renaming Files and Folders
• Calling shutil.move(source, destination) will move the file or folder at the
path source to the path destination and will return a string of the absolute
path of the new location.
• If destination is a folder, the source file gets moved into destination folder and
keeps its current filename.

>>> import shutil

>>> shutil.move('C:\\bacon.txt', 'C:\\eggs')
'C:\\eggs\\bacon.txt'

• Destination path can be a file name.

>>> shutil.move('C:\\bacon.txt', 'C:\\eggs\\new_bacon.txt')
'C:\\eggs\\new_bacon.txt'
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Permanently Deleting Files and Folders
• To delete a folder and all of its contents, you use the shutil module.
• os.unlink(path) will delete the file at path.

• os.rmdir(path) will delete the folder at path. This folder must be empty of
any files or folders.

• shutil.rmtree(path) will remove the folder at path, and all files and folders
it contains will also be deleted.

>>>import os
for filename in os.listdir():
if filename.endswith('.rxt'):
os.unlink(filename)
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Safe Deletes with the send2trash Module

• send2trash is much safer than Python’s regular delete

functions, because it will send folders and files to your
computer’s trash or recycle bin instead of permanently deleting
them.

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 Walking a directory tree
Traversing through a directory (folder) and all its subfolders to
perform some operation on files or folders within them

import os
for folderName, subfolders, filenames in os.walk('C:\\delicious'):
print('The current folder is ' + folderName)
for subfolder in subfolders:
print('SUBFOLDER OF ' + folderName + ': ' + subfolder)
for filename in filenames:
print('FILE INSIDE ' + folderName + ': '+ filename)
print('')

APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT
USING PYTHON – 18CS55 9
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Cont...
• You can use os.walk() in a for loop statement to walk a
directory tree,
• os.walk() function will return three values on each iteration
through the loop:
1. A string of the current folder’s name
2. A list of strings of the folders in the current folder
3. A list of strings of the files in the current folder

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Compressing files with the zipfile module
• ZIP files (with the .zip file extension), can hold the compressed
contents of many other files.
• Compressing a file reduces its size, which is useful when
transferring it over the Internet.
• Since a ZIP file can also contain multiple files and subfolders, it’s a
handy way to package several files into one. This single file, called
an archive file, can then be attached to an email.
• Python programs can both create and open (or extract) ZIP files
using functions in the zipfile module.

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Reading ZIP Files

• To read the contents of a ZIP file, first you must create a ZipFile
object.

• To create a ZipFile object, call the zipfile.ZipFile() function,

passing it a string of the .zip file’s filename.

• Note that zipfile is the name of the Python module, and

ZipFile() is the name of the function.

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• A ZipFile object has a namelist() method that returns a list of
strings for all the files and folders contained in the ZIP file.
• These strings can be passed to the getinfo() ZipFile method to
return a ZipInfo object about that particular file.
• ZipInfo objects have their own attributes, such as file_size and
compress_size in bytes, which hold integers of the original file
size and compressed file size, respectively.
• The command at 1 calculates how efficiently example.zip is
compressed by dividing the original file size by the compressed
file size and prints this information using a string formatted
with %s.
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Extracting from ZIP Files

• The extractall() method for ZipFile objects extracts all the files and
folders from a ZIP file into the current working directory.

>>> import zipfile, os

>>> os.chdir('C:\\') # move to the folder with example.zip
>>> exampleZip = zipfile.ZipFile('example.zip')
>>> exampleZip.extractall()
>>> exampleZip.close()

• After running this code, the contents of example.zip will be

extracted to C:\.
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• The extract() method for ZipFile objects will extract a single file
from the ZIP file.
• The value that extract() returns is the absolute path to which the file
was extracted.
• Continue the interactive shell example:

>>> exampleZip.extract('spam.txt')
'C:\\spam.txt'
>>> exampleZip.extract('spam.txt', 'C:\\some\\new\\folders')
'C:\\some\\new\\folders\\spam.txt'
>>> exampleZip.close()
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Creating and Adding to ZIP Files
• To create your own compressed ZIP files, you must open the
ZipFile object in write mode by passing 'w' as second argument.
• When you pass a path to the write() method of a ZipFile object,
Python will compress the file at that path and add it into the ZIP
file.
• The write() method’s first argument is a string of the filename
to add.
• The second argument is the compression type parameter, which
tells the computer what algorithm it should use to compress the
files
• zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED.
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>>> import zipfile
>>> newZip = zipfile.ZipFile('new.zip', 'w')
>>> newZip.write('spam.txt', compress_type=zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED)
>>> newZip.close()

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