Disable SameFileError exception in shutil.copy

Question

I have the following code because sometimes these files will be the same and sometimes they won't.

import shutil
try:
   shutil.copy('filea','fileb')
   shutil.copy('filec','filed')
except shutil.SameFileError
   pass

The problem is that the second copy won't happen if the first copy has the same file.

Any suggestions on how to work around this? I don't see an argument in the shutil documentation that disables this check.

Answer 1

You can just separate the copy calls:

try:
   shutil.copy('filea','fileb')
except shutil.SameFileError:
   pass

try:
   shutil.copy('filec','filed')
except shutil.SameFileError:
   pass

Or put these four lines in a function.