How to copy a folder into an existing folder using python

Question

I am new to python, and am currently trying to copy a folder 'foo' (potentially with some files/folders inside) into another existing folder 'bar'. After this, there should be a new path created that should look something like this "...bar/foo/*".

By copying 'foo' into 'bar' I do not wish to have the original contents in 'bar' to be removed, and the only changes in 'bar' is a new subfolder 'foo' being added.

I have tried to search online for the solution, but was not able to find any libraries that provide such a feature. I would highly appreciate it if I could be provided with some information on how to get started, as I am in need of this feature for another item that I am working on.

The current python version I am using is 3.8.9, so I am able to use any new libraries that were introduced from 3.0 onwards. The platform I am working on is windows.

Answer 1

You can use the copytree() method. Because it copy the actual content, you need to create the folder first with os.mkdir

import shutil
import os

directory = "foo"
path = os.path.join(parent_dir, directory)    
os.mkdir(path)

source_dir = r"C:\foo"
destination_dir = r"C:\bar\foo"
shutil.copytree(source_dir, destination_dir)

Some documentation

Another solution is to use directly the command line and launching the copy/paste command from there

You can do it by importing the os import os and then with os.system(my_command) where my_command is the string containing the actual command. In linux you can use cp -r directory-1 directory-2 (to copy a directory, you need to add the -r (or -R ) flag—which is shorthand for --recursive )

os.system('cp -r C:\foo C:\bar')