How to find files and save them to different folder in python

Question

I amt trying to find all relevant files and folders from local repository. e.g. I pulled projects from git to my local machine and I want to search for specific files(.txt) and save them to new folder in same pattern (root->dir-> file). Basically I want to get rid of any files which doesn't match name and extension but keep the same format. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can traverse the directory tree finding the files you want with this:

import os, fnmatch

def find_files(directory, pattern):
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(directory):
        for basename in files:
            if fnmatch.fnmatch(basename, pattern):
                filename = os.path.join(root, basename)

                yield filename

def find_files_to_list(directory, pattern):
    file_list = []
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(directory):
        for basename in files:
            if fnmatch.fnmatch(basename, pattern):
                filename = os.path.join(root, basename)
                file_list.append(filename)

    return file_list

then copy the repository and do something like this:

wanted_files = find_files_to_list('/original_project/', '*.html')
for filename in find_files('/copy_project/', '*'):
    if filename not in wanted_files:
        os.remove(filename)

Answer 2

you can do this:

import shutil
import os 

The path of the folder where the files are:

path = r'C:\Users\pc\Downloads\6.ahmed'

code to select specific files, here I'm selecting all files in the folder with .xml extension. You can change it according to your need.

xml_files = [f for f in os.listdir(path) if f.endswith('.xml')]

source and destination folder path and the loop to move the files:

source_folder = r"C:\Users\pc\Downloads\6.ahmed\\"
destination_folder = r"C:\Users\pc\Downloads\annotations\\"


# iterate files
for file in xml_files:
    # construct full file path
    source = source_folder + file
    destination = destination_folder + file
    # move file
    shutil.move(source, destination)
    print('Moved:', file)

combine the whole code and run it.