How do I copy an entire directory of files into an existing directory using Python?

Question

Here's a solution that's part of the standard library:

from distutils.dir_util import copy_tree
copy_tree("/a/b/c", "/x/y/z")

See this similar question.

Copy directory contents into a directory with python

• Reference - https://docs.python.org/3/distutils/apiref.html#distutils.dir_util.copy_tree

This limitation of the standard shutil.copytree seems arbitrary and annoying. Workaround:

import os, shutil
def copytree(src, dst, symlinks=False, ignore=None):
    for item in os.listdir(src):
        s = os.path.join(src, item)
        d = os.path.join(dst, item)
        if os.path.isdir(s):
            shutil.copytree(s, d, symlinks, ignore)
        else:
            shutil.copy2(s, d)

Note that it's not entirely consistent with the standard copytree:

• it doesn't honor symlinks and ignore parameters for the root directory of the src tree;
• it doesn't raise shutil.Error for errors at the root level of src;
• in case of errors during copying of a subtree, it will raise shutil.Error for that subtree instead of trying to copy other subtrees and raising single combined shutil.Error.

Python 3.8 introduced the dirs_exist_ok argument to shutil.copytree:

Recursively copy an entire directory tree rooted at src to a directory named dst and return the destination directory. dirs_exist_ok dictates whether to raise an exception in case dst or any missing parent directory already exists.

Therefore, with Python 3.8+ this should work:

import shutil

shutil.copytree('bar', 'foo')
shutil.copytree('baz', 'foo', dirs_exist_ok=True)

In slight improvement on atzz's answer to the function where the above function always tries to copy the files from source to destination.

def copytree(src, dst, symlinks=False, ignore=None):
    if not os.path.exists(dst):
        os.makedirs(dst)
    for item in os.listdir(src):
        s = os.path.join(src, item)
        d = os.path.join(dst, item)
        if os.path.isdir(s):
            copytree(s, d, symlinks, ignore)
        else:
            if not os.path.exists(d) or os.stat(s).st_mtime - os.stat(d).st_mtime > 1:
                shutil.copy2(s, d)

In my above implementation

• Creating the output directory if not already exists
• Doing the copy directory by recursively calling my own method.
• When we come to actually copying the file I check if the file is modified then only we should copy.

I am using above function along with scons build. It helped me a lot as every time when I compile I may not need to copy entire set of files.. but only the files which are modified.

A merge one inspired by atzz and Mital Vora:

#!/usr/bin/python
import os
import shutil
import stat
def copytree(src, dst, symlinks = False, ignore = None):
  if not os.path.exists(dst):
    os.makedirs(dst)
    shutil.copystat(src, dst)
  lst = os.listdir(src)
  if ignore:
    excl = ignore(src, lst)
    lst = [x for x in lst if x not in excl]
  for item in lst:
    s = os.path.join(src, item)
    d = os.path.join(dst, item)
    if symlinks and os.path.islink(s):
      if os.path.lexists(d):
        os.remove(d)
      os.symlink(os.readlink(s), d)
      try:
        st = os.lstat(s)
        mode = stat.S_IMODE(st.st_mode)
        os.lchmod(d, mode)
      except:
        pass # lchmod not available
    elif os.path.isdir(s):
      copytree(s, d, symlinks, ignore)
    else:
      shutil.copy2(s, d)

• Same behavior as shutil.copytree, with symlinks and ignore parameters
• Create directory destination structure if non existant
• Will not fail if dst already exists