Python - Move and overwrite files and folders

This will go through the source directory, create any directories that do not already exist in destination directory, and move files from source to the destination directory:

import os
import shutil

root_src_dir = 'Src Directory\\'
root_dst_dir = 'Dst Directory\\'

for src_dir, dirs, files in os.walk(root_src_dir):
    dst_dir = src_dir.replace(root_src_dir, root_dst_dir, 1)
    if not os.path.exists(dst_dir):
        os.makedirs(dst_dir)
    for file_ in files:
        src_file = os.path.join(src_dir, file_)
        dst_file = os.path.join(dst_dir, file_)
        if os.path.exists(dst_file):
            # in case of the src and dst are the same file
            if os.path.samefile(src_file, dst_file):
                continue
            os.remove(dst_file)
        shutil.move(src_file, dst_dir)

Any pre-existing files will be removed first (via os.remove) before being replace by the corresponding source file. Any files or directories that already exist in the destination but not in the source will remain untouched.

Use copy() instead, which is willing to overwrite destination files. If you then want the first tree to go away, just rmtree() it separately once you are done iterating over it.

http://docs.python.org/library/shutil.html#shutil.copy

http://docs.python.org/library/shutil.html#shutil.rmtree

Update:

Do an os.walk() over the source tree. For each directory, check if it exists on the destination side, and os.makedirs() it if it is missing. For each file, simply shutil.copy() and the file will be created or overwritten, whichever is appropriate.

Since none of the above worked for me, so I wrote my own recursive function. Call Function copyTree(dir1, dir2) to merge directories. Run on multi-platforms Linux and Windows.

def forceMergeFlatDir(srcDir, dstDir):
    if not os.path.exists(dstDir):
        os.makedirs(dstDir)
    for item in os.listdir(srcDir):
        srcFile = os.path.join(srcDir, item)
        dstFile = os.path.join(dstDir, item)
        forceCopyFile(srcFile, dstFile)

def forceCopyFile (sfile, dfile):
    if os.path.isfile(sfile):
        shutil.copy2(sfile, dfile)

def isAFlatDir(sDir):
    for item in os.listdir(sDir):
        sItem = os.path.join(sDir, item)
        if os.path.isdir(sItem):
            return False
    return True


def copyTree(src, dst):
    for item in os.listdir(src):
        s = os.path.join(src, item)
        d = os.path.join(dst, item)
        if os.path.isfile(s):
            if not os.path.exists(dst):
                os.makedirs(dst)
            forceCopyFile(s,d)
        if os.path.isdir(s):
            isRecursive = not isAFlatDir(s)
            if isRecursive:
                copyTree(s, d)
            else:
                forceMergeFlatDir(s, d)

If you also need to overwrite files with read only flag use this:

def copyDirTree(root_src_dir,root_dst_dir):
"""
Copy directory tree. Overwrites also read only files.
:param root_src_dir: source directory
:param root_dst_dir:  destination directory
"""
for src_dir, dirs, files in os.walk(root_src_dir):
    dst_dir = src_dir.replace(root_src_dir, root_dst_dir, 1)
    if not os.path.exists(dst_dir):
        os.makedirs(dst_dir)
    for file_ in files:
        src_file = os.path.join(src_dir, file_)
        dst_file = os.path.join(dst_dir, file_)
        if os.path.exists(dst_file):
            try:
                os.remove(dst_file)
            except PermissionError as exc:
                os.chmod(dst_file, stat.S_IWUSR)
                os.remove(dst_file)

        shutil.copy(src_file, dst_dir)

Python - Move and overwrite files and folders

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