Organizing Files in Python

This article covers operations you can do with a file regarding the Operating System: rename and move a file, check if a file exists, delete a file, make a copy of a file.

This a direct extension of a previous post specifically on the basic operations you can do with a file: create, write, read, append and close files. You can read about it in File Handling in Python.

Delete a File

To delete a file, the os module is also needed.

Use the remove() method.

import os

os.remove('my_file.txt')

Check if a File exists

Use the os.path.exists() method to check the existence of a file.

import os

if os.path.exists('my_file.txt'):
  os.remove('my_file.txt')
else:
  print('There is no such file!')

Copy a File

For this one, I like to use the copyfile() method from the shutil module.

from shutil import copyfile

copyfile('my_file.txt','another_file.txt')

There are a few options to copy a file, but copyfile() is the fastest one.

Rename and Move a File

If you need to move or rename a file you can use the move() method from the shutil module.

from shutil import move

move('my_file.txt','another_file.txt')