Module shutil

Copy data and mode bits ("cp src dst").

The destination may be a directory.

Copy data and all stat info ("cp -p src dst").

The destination may be a directory.

Recursively copy a directory tree using copy2().

The destination directory must not already exist.
If exception(s) occur, an Error is raised with a list of reasons.

If the optional symlinks flag is true, symbolic links in the
source tree result in symbolic links in the destination tree; if
it is false, the contents of the files pointed to by symbolic
links are copied.

The optional ignore argument is a callable. If given, it
is called with the `src` parameter, which is the directory
being visited by copytree(), and `names` which is the list of
`src` contents, as returned by os.listdir():

    callable(src, names) -> ignored_names

Since copytree() is called recursively, the callable will be
called once for each directory that is copied. It returns a
list of names relative to the `src` directory that should
not be copied.

XXX Consider this example code rather than the ultimate tool.

Returns a list of supported formats for archiving and unarchiving.

Each element of the returned sequence is a tuple (name, description)

Function that can be used as copytree() ignore parameter.

Patterns is a sequence of glob-style patterns that are used to exclude files

Create an archive file (eg. zip or tar).

'base_name' is the name of the file to create, minus any format-specific extension; 'format' is the archive format: one of "zip", "tar", "bztar" or "gztar".

'root_dir' is a directory that will be the root directory of the archive; ie. we typically chdir into 'root_dir' before creating the archive. 'base_dir' is the directory where we start archiving from; ie. 'base_dir' will be the common prefix of all files and directories in the archive. 'root_dir' and 'base_dir' both default to the current directory. Returns the name of the archive file.

'owner' and 'group' are used when creating a tar archive. By default, uses the current owner and group.

Recursively move a file or directory to another location. This is similar to the Unix "mv" command.

If the destination is a directory or a symlink to a directory, the source is moved inside the directory. The destination path must not already exist.

If the destination already exists but is not a directory, it may be overwritten depending on os.rename() semantics.

If the destination is on our current filesystem, then rename() is used. Otherwise, src is copied to the destination and then removed. A lot more could be done here... A look at a mv.c shows a lot of the issues this implementation glosses over.

Registers an archive format.

name is the name of the format. function is the callable that will be used to create archives. If provided, extra_args is a sequence of (name, value) tuples that will be passed as arguments to the callable. description can be provided to describe the format, and will be returned by the get_archive_formats() function.

Recursively delete a directory tree.

If ignore_errors is set, errors are ignored; otherwise, if onerror is set, it is called to handle the error with arguments (func, path, exc_info) where func is os.listdir, os.remove, or os.rmdir; path is the argument to that function that caused it to fail; and exc_info is a tuple returned by sys.exc_info(). If ignore_errors is false and onerror is None, an exception is raised.