Python Learning: Automate Boring Stuff with Python | Chapter 8 : My Solution to Practice Project: Selective Copy

Written by on in Coding

As usual… super simple automation..

I know it is quite trivial, but the fact that with a few lines of code I could re-organize my files based on their extensions makes coding really fun even outside of work.

Code

# selective copy
# walks through a folder tree and searches for files with a certain file extension.
# copies file matches into a new folder

# Usage: python scopy.py   

import sys
import os
import shutil

if len(sys.argv) == 4:
    # TODO: get source, destination and extension
    source = os.path.abspath(sys.argv[1])
    destination = os.path.abspath(sys.argv[2])
    extension = sys.argv[3]
    # TODO: validate source and destination
    if not os.path.exists(source):
        print("Invalid source path")
    if not os.path.exists(destination):
        os.mkdir(destination)
    destination = os.path.abspath(destination)
    # TODO: loop through files and subfolders in source
    for folder, subfolders, files in os.walk(source):
        # TODO: use shutil to copy files to destination
        for file in files:
            if file.endswith(extension):
            # only copy if file does not exist in destination
                if not os.path.exists(os.path.join(destination, file)):
                    shutil.copy(os.path.join(
                                folder, file), destination)
                    # TODO: print files copied (former path --> new path)
                    print("File copied: {}".format(file))

else:
    print("Usage: python scopy.py   ")

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