Why is shutil.copytree not copying tree from source to destination?

Question

I have a function:

def path_clone( source_dir_prompt, destination_dir_prompt) :
    try:
        shutil.copytree(source_dir_prompt, destination_dir_prompt)
        print("Potentially copied?")
    except OSError as e:
        # If the error was caused because the source wasn't a directory
        if e.errno == errno.ENOTDIR:
            shutil.copy(source_dir_prompt, destination_dir_prompt)
        else:
            print('Directory not copied. Error: %s' % e)

Why is it failing and outputting :

Directory not copied. Error: [Errno 17] File exists: '[2]'

My source directory exists with files/directory. My destination folder exists but when i run this, no files are copied and it hits my else statement.

I tried also to set permissions on both folders to chmod 777 to avoid unix-permission errors, but this didnt solve the issue either.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

what do you want to happen of the directory exists? – Padraic Cunningham Jul 10 '15 at 16:14 — Padraic Cunningham, Jul 10 '15 at 16:14
@PadraicCunningham - Basically overwrite the files. – CodeTalk Jul 10 '15 at 20:28 — CodeTalk, Jul 10 '15 at 20:28

score 13 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 10 '15 at 20:54

13

I thank you all for trying to help me, evidentially I found a way that works for my situation and am posting it below in case it will help someone out some day to fix this issue (and not spend several hours trying to get it to work) - Enjoy:

try:
    #if path already exists, remove it before copying with copytree()
    if os.path.exists(dst):
        shutil.rmtree(dst)
        shutil.copytree(src, dst)
except OSError as e:
    # If the error was caused because the source wasn't a directory
    if e.errno == errno.ENOTDIR:
       shutil.copy(source_dir_prompt, destination_dir_prompt)
    else:
        print('Directory not copied. Error: %s' % e)

answered Jul 10 '15 at 20:54

CodeTalk

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1

Today is that day :). Thanks this helped a lot!! – ishaan arora Oct 02 '19 at 12:47
4

I see that in this example that the copytree function is only invoked if the path exists. You may want to move that command out of the if-statement block so that it is always invoked. – Michael Behrens Dec 13 '20 at 02:26
Indentation of copytree() has been updated. – David Rachwalik Dec 28 '22 at 07:53

score 9 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 10 '15 at 16:11

The shutil docs for copytree say

Recursively copy an entire directory tree rooted at src. The destination directory, named by dst, must not already exist; it will be created as well as missing parent directories. Permissions and times of directories are copied with copystat(), individual files are copied using shutil.copy2().

When using copytree, you need to ensure that src exists and dst does not exist. Even if the top level directory contains nothing, copytree won't work because it expects nothing to be at dst and will create the top level directory itself.

Still getting the same error...after removing the destination directory. — CodeTalk, Jul 10 '15 at 19:45

score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 13 '23 at 08:50

5

You can use the following parameter :

copytree(source, dest, dirs_exist_ok = True)

This will overwrite the already existing data of the same name without raising error.

answered Feb 13 '23 at 08:50

Robin maltaros

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Why is shutil.copytree not copying tree from source to destination?

3 Answers3