Copy a directory structure to another, but only copying specific files

Question

script.py:

#!/usr/bin/python
import os
srcDir = os.getcwd()
dirName = 'target_directory'
dstDir = os.path.abspath(dirName)
def ignore_list(path, files):
 filesToIgnore = []
 for fileName in files:
 fullFileName = os.path.join(os.path.normpath(path), fileName)
 if (not os.path.isdir(fullFileName)
 and not fileName.endswith('pyc')
 and not fileName.endswith('ui')
 and not fileName.endswith('txt')
 and not fileName == '__main__.py'
 and not fileName == 'dcpp.bat'):
 filesToIgnore.append(fileName)
 return filesToIgnore
# start of script
shutil.copytree(srcDir, dstDir, ignore=ignore_list)

As shutil.copytree() has no option where I can give names for required files to copy like "ignore," I have modified the argument of ignore to give "required files to copy."

Review my code.

Answer 1

Looks ok for a specific task, but the code is not reusable at all. It would be more useful to create a function ignore_except that could be used like this to perform the same task:

shutil.copytree(srcDir, dstDir, 
 ignore=ignore_except('*.pyc', '*.ui', '*.txt', '__main__.py', 'dcpp.bat'))

The source code of shutil.ignore_patterns would be a good starting point for such function.

• Patrick: pls paste here code of ignore_except()
• martineau: @Patrick: See the include_patterns() function in my answer to a related Python question on stackoverflow titled Copying specific files to a new folder, while maintaining the original subdirectory tree.