Python: Copying Files!

[Sailor5]

Ahoy Sailor!

So I've been altering my Python Twisted project slightly so it's ready for windows, There is one job I used os.system for, However this can't be done with CMD, As it lacks some functions I needed (Bash is way better)

In short, I need to copy up to four files (Varying on the computer, There may be less) to another DIR, If I use shutils to try copy all the files, And it doesn't find one, Then it breaks the connection between Client & Server. So is there any way we could copy files without breaking or to check if the files exist beforehand?

Thanks Bye!

[StephenF]

First thought, to install an ssh server on the remote machine, then use a combination of ssh and sftp.

[wmcbrine]

os.listdir()
os.path.exists()
os.path.isfile()

among other helpful functions. Without seeing what you have now, it's hard to be more specific.

[ashishanand19]

os.system() should work for windows too. You just need to give the commands right in windows because cp won't work for copying instead you need to use copy for windows.
So if you are writing the script to run on both windows and unix at the same time you need to have a check before.
import platform
platform.platform()
will give you the details of the operating system.

OR else try using the subprocess module
subprocess.popen() should be helpful.

[wmcbrine]

os.system() would work, yes, but it's silly to use it just for copying files. It's needless overhead -- making Python launch a whole other shell for something it can easily do itself.

From the OP's vague description, he could probably get by with just putting his copy call in a try/except loop (and "pass" on the except). But I'd really prefer to see his code before making such a suggestion.

[Sailor5]

os.system() should work for windows too. You just need to give the commands right in windows because cp won't work for copying instead you need to use copy for windows.
So if you are writing the script to run on both windows and unix at the same time you need to have a check before.
import platform
platform.platform()
will give you the details of the operating system.

OR else try using the subprocess module
subprocess.popen() should be helpful.
It's not that I don't understand CMD, It's some of the functions I would use are not there in cmd, For example if you want to specify more then one command on one line, You would use two ampersands, However if one of the commands fails, The entire line breaks


os.system('copy 1.exp C:\&&copy 2.exp C:\&&Echo Done!')So first we try to copy 1.exp, But if that file isn't there then it would break the entire operation, And therefore not perform any other actions. So that's why I stopped using os.system. That and also you can't use wildcards when copying is a bit of a draw back.


os.listdir()
os.path.exists()
os.path.isfile()

among other helpful functions. Without seeing what you have now, it's hard to be more specific.
Thanks I didn't know of the os.path.isfile() command before, I'll check to see if the comeback is True and then copy the file using shutils if so!

[soltanis]

You should use shutil and not os.system to perform copying; trying to use the cmd.exe shell inevitably leads to frustration. If you want wildcard functionality, then what you are looking for is the glob module (look it up; part of the standard python distribution) which allows you to iterate over files which match a very restricted form of regular expressions:



import shutil, glob

dest_dir = "C:\\"
for f in glob.glob("*.dat"):
shutil.copy(f, dest_dir)

[evstevemd]

And.. avoid system specific suffs when you plan to code for X-Platform :P