How to copy a file along with directory structure/path using python?

Question

First thing I have to mention here, I'm new to python.

Now I have a file located in:

a/long/long/path/to/file.py

I want to copy to my home directory with a new folder created:

/home/myhome/new_folder

My expected result is:

/home/myhome/new_folder/a/long/long/path/to/file.py

Is there any existing library to do that? If no, how can I achieve that?

there you go, this already explains it stackoverflow.com/questions/1994488/… — Samuele Mattiuzzo
May be docs.python.org/library/shutil.html#shutil.copyfile ? — Anton Bessonov
@Anderson Green: it is not a duplicate. The accepted answers if swapped won't work for the questions. They are closely related (copying stuff in Python); it doesn't make them identical. Please, read the full the question and look at the answers before voting to close next time. — jfs
it's a while ago, but generally speaking a good tactic if there is a similar but not identical question, is to reference the existing question in one's own question, and state how one's own question is different. — Hugh Perkins

jfs jfs · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-11T15:42:54

To create all intermediate-level destination directories you could use os.makedirs() before copying:

import os
import shutil

srcfile = 'a/long/long/path/to/file.py'
dstroot = '/home/myhome/new_folder'


assert not os.path.isabs(srcfile)
dstdir =  os.path.join(dstroot, os.path.dirname(srcfile))

os.makedirs(dstdir) # create all directories, raise an error if it already exists
shutil.copy(srcfile, dstdir)

How to copy a file along with directory structure/path using python?

2 Answers