How to copy file in Python

The shutil package has many methods we can use to copy/move files:

1. Copy file using copyfile from shutil

from shutil import copyfile
copyfile(src, dst)

• Copy the contents of the file named src to a file named dst.
• 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 strings.

2. Copy file/folder using copy from shutil

from shutil import copy
copy(src, dst)

Note

The difference between copy and copyfile is that in copy(src, dst) the dst can be a directory

3. Copy file/folder using copy2 from shutil

from shutil import copy2
copy2(src, dst)

copy2(src,dst) is often more useful than copyfile(src,dst) because:

• it allows dst to be a directory (instead of the complete target filename), in which case the basename of src is used for creating the new file;
• it preserves the original modification and access info (mtime and atime) in the file metadata (however, this comes with a slight overhead).

4. Conclusion

The below table shows the functions for copying/moving file/folder

┌──────────────────┬────────┬───────────┬───────┬────────────────┐
│     Function     │ Copies │   Copies  │Can use│   Destination  │
│                  │metadata│permissions│buffer │may be directory│
├──────────────────┼────────┼───────────┼───────┼────────────────┤
│shutil.copy       │   No   │    Yes    │   No  │      Yes       │
│shutil.copyfile   │   No   │     No    │   No  │       No       │
│shutil.copy2      │  Yes   │    Yes    │   No  │      Yes       │
│shutil.copyfileobj│   No   │     No    │  Yes  │       No       │
└──────────────────┴────────┴───────────┴───────┴────────────────┘