Copy multiple files in Python

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How to copy all the files present in one directory to another directory using Python. I have the source path and the destination path as string.

8 Answers
def recursive_copy_files(source_path, destination_path, override=False):
    """
    Recursive copies files from source  to destination directory.
    :param source_path: source directory
    :param destination_path: destination directory
    :param override if True all files will be overridden otherwise skip if file exist
    :return: count of copied files
    """
    files_count = 0
    if not os.path.exists(destination_path):
        os.mkdir(destination_path)
    items = glob.glob(source_path + '/*')
    for item in items:
        if os.path.isdir(item):
            path = os.path.join(destination_path, item.split('/')[-1])
            files_count += recursive_copy_files(source_path=item, destination_path=path, override=override)
        else:
            file = os.path.join(destination_path, item.split('/')[-1])
            if not os.path.exists(file) or override:
                shutil.copyfile(item, file)
                files_count += 1
    return files_count

Here is another example of a recursive copy function that lets you copy the contents of the directory (including sub-directories) one file at a time, which I used to solve this problem.

import os
import shutil

def recursive_copy(src, dest):
    """
    Copy each file from src dir to dest dir, including sub-directories.
    """
    for item in os.listdir(src):
        file_path = os.path.join(src, item)

        # if item is a file, copy it
        if os.path.isfile(file_path):
            shutil.copy(file_path, dest)

        # else if item is a folder, recurse 
        elif os.path.isdir(file_path):
            new_dest = os.path.join(dest, item)
            os.mkdir(new_dest)
            recursive_copy(file_path, new_dest)

EDIT: If you can, definitely just use shutil.copytree(src, dest). This requires that that destination folder does not already exist though. If you need to copy files into an existing folder, the above method works well!

The top rated answer will throw a runtime error because it tries to join a list with a file name on line 5, when it's supposed to be joining one string with another string. Create another variable called pathSrc and use that in the join argument. I would also create another variable called pathDest and concatenate it with file_name on the last line. I also imported the method needed from shutil rather than the whole module.

import os
from shutil import copyfile
pathSrc = "the folder where the src files are"
pathDest = "the folder where the dest files are going"
src_files = os.listdir(src)
for file_name in src_files:
    full_file_name = os.path.join(pathSrc, file_name)
    if os.path.isfile(full_file_name):
        shutil.copy(full_file_name, pathDest + file_name)

Why not a single line?

import os
import shutil
dest = 'path/to/destination/folder'
src = 'path/to/source/folder/' # mind the '/' at the end
[shutil.copy(src+fn, dest) for fn in os.listdir(src)]

Or with a error handling condition

import os
import shutil
dest = 'path/to/destination/folder'
src = 'path/to/source/folder/' # mind the '/' at the end
try:    
    [shutil.copy(src+fn, dest) for fn in os.listdir(src)]
except:
    print('files already exist in', dest)
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