Copy file or directories recursively in Python

Question

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

To add on Tzot's and gns answers, here's an alternative way of copying files and folders recursively. (Python 3.X)

import os, shutil

root_src_dir = r'C:\MyMusic'    #Path/Location of the source directory
root_dst_dir = 'D:MusicBackUp'  #Path to the destination folder

for src_dir, dirs, files in os.walk(root_src_dir):
    dst_dir = src_dir.replace(root_src_dir, root_dst_dir, 1)
    if not os.path.exists(dst_dir):
        os.makedirs(dst_dir)
    for file_ in files:
        src_file = os.path.join(src_dir, file_)
        dst_file = os.path.join(dst_dir, file_)
        if os.path.exists(dst_file):
            os.remove(dst_file)
        shutil.copy(src_file, dst_dir)

Should it be your first time and you have no idea how to copy files and folders recursively, I hope this helps.

shutil.copy and shutil.copy2 are copying files.

shutil.copytree copies a folder with all the files and all subfolders. shutil.copytree is using shutil.copy2 to copy the files.

So the analog to cp -r you are saying is the shutil.copytree because cp -r targets and copies a folder and its files/subfolders like shutil.copytree. Without the -r cp copies files like shutil.copy and shutil.copy2 do.

The fastest and most elegant way I've found until now is to use the copy_tree function of distutils.dir_util native package:

import distutils.dir_util
from_dir = "foo/bar"
to_dir = "truc/machin"
distutils.dir_util.copy_tree(from_dir, to_dir)

Unix cp doesn't 'support both directories and files':

betelgeuse:tmp james$ cp source/ dest/
cp: source/ is a directory (not copied).

To make cp copy a directory, you have to manually tell cp that it's a directory, by using the '-r' flag.

There is some disconnect here though - cp -r when passed a filename as the source will happily copy just the single file; copytree won't.