How to copy files

Question

How do I copy a file in Python?

Answer

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.