File and Directory Access

The modules described in this chapter deal with disk files and directories. For example, there are modules for reading the properties of files, manipulating paths in a portable way, and creating temporary files. The full list of modules in this chapter is:

• pathlib — Object-oriented filesystem paths
  • Basic use
  • Pure paths
    • PurePath
    • PurePosixPath
    • PureWindowsPath
    • General properties
    • Operators
    • Accessing individual parts
      • parts
    • Methods and properties
      • drive
      • root
      • anchor
      • parents
      • parent
      • name
      • suffix
      • suffixes
      • stem
      • as_posix()
      • as_uri()
      • is_absolute()
      • is_relative_to()
      • is_reserved()
      • joinpath()
      • match()
      • relative_to()
      • with_name()
      • with_stem()
      • with_suffix()
      • with_segments()
  • Concrete paths
    • Path
    • PosixPath
    • WindowsPath
    • Expanding and resolving paths
      • home()
      • expanduser()
      • cwd()
      • absolute()
      • resolve()
      • readlink()
    • Querying file type and status
      • stat()
      • lstat()
      • exists()
      • is_file()
      • is_dir()
      • is_symlink()
      • is_junction()
      • is_mount()
      • is_socket()
      • is_fifo()
      • is_block_device()
      • is_char_device()
      • samefile()
    • Reading and writing files
      • open()
      • read_text()
      • read_bytes()
      • write_text()
      • write_bytes()
    • Reading directories
      • iterdir()
      • glob()
      • rglob()
      • walk()
    • Creating files and directories
      • touch()
      • mkdir()
      • symlink_to()
      • hardlink_to()
    • Renaming and deleting
      • rename()
      • replace()
      • unlink()
      • rmdir()
    • Permissions and ownership
      • owner()
      • group()
      • chmod()
      • lchmod()
  • Correspondence to tools in the os module
• os.path — Common pathname manipulations
  • abspath()
  • basename()
  • commonpath()
  • commonprefix()
  • dirname()
  • exists()
  • lexists()
  • expanduser()
  • expandvars()
  • getatime()
  • getmtime()
  • getctime()
  • getsize()
  • isabs()
  • isfile()
  • isdir()
  • isjunction()
  • islink()
  • ismount()
  • isdevdrive()
  • join()
  • normcase()
  • normpath()
  • realpath()
  • relpath()
  • samefile()
  • sameopenfile()
  • samestat()
  • split()
  • splitdrive()
  • splitroot()
  • splitext()
  • supports_unicode_filenames
• fileinput — Iterate over lines from multiple input streams
  • input()
  • filename()
  • fileno()
  • lineno()
  • filelineno()
  • isfirstline()
  • isstdin()
  • nextfile()
  • close()
  • FileInput
  • hook_compressed()
  • hook_encoded()
• stat — Interpreting stat() results
  • S_ISDIR()
  • S_ISCHR()
  • S_ISBLK()
  • S_ISREG()
  • S_ISFIFO()
  • S_ISLNK()
  • S_ISSOCK()
  • S_ISDOOR()
  • S_ISPORT()
  • S_ISWHT()
  • S_IMODE()
  • S_IFMT()
  • filemode()
  • ST_MODE
  • ST_INO
  • ST_DEV
  • ST_NLINK
  • ST_UID
  • ST_GID
  • ST_SIZE
  • ST_ATIME
  • ST_MTIME
  • ST_CTIME
  • S_IFSOCK
  • S_IFLNK
  • S_IFREG
  • S_IFBLK
  • S_IFDIR
  • S_IFCHR
  • S_IFIFO
  • S_IFDOOR
  • S_IFPORT
  • S_IFWHT
  • S_ISUID
  • S_ISGID
  • S_ISVTX
  • S_IRWXU
  • S_IRUSR
  • S_IWUSR
  • S_IXUSR
  • S_IRWXG
  • S_IRGRP
  • S_IWGRP
  • S_IXGRP
  • S_IRWXO
  • S_IROTH
  • S_IWOTH
  • S_IXOTH
  • S_ENFMT
  • S_IREAD
  • S_IWRITE
  • S_IEXEC
  • UF_NODUMP
  • UF_IMMUTABLE
  • UF_APPEND
  • UF_OPAQUE
  • UF_NOUNLINK
  • UF_COMPRESSED
  • UF_HIDDEN
  • SF_ARCHIVED
  • SF_IMMUTABLE
  • SF_APPEND
  • SF_NOUNLINK
  • SF_SNAPSHOT
  • FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ARCHIVE
  • FILE_ATTRIBUTE_COMPRESSED
  • FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DEVICE
  • FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY
  • FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ENCRYPTED
  • FILE_ATTRIBUTE_HIDDEN
  • FILE_ATTRIBUTE_INTEGRITY_STREAM
  • FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL
  • FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NOT_CONTENT_INDEXED
  • FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NO_SCRUB_DATA
  • FILE_ATTRIBUTE_OFFLINE
  • FILE_ATTRIBUTE_READONLY
  • FILE_ATTRIBUTE_REPARSE_POINT
  • FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SPARSE_FILE
  • FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SYSTEM
  • FILE_ATTRIBUTE_TEMPORARY
  • FILE_ATTRIBUTE_VIRTUAL
  • IO_REPARSE_TAG_SYMLINK
  • IO_REPARSE_TAG_MOUNT_POINT
  • IO_REPARSE_TAG_APPEXECLINK
• filecmp — File and Directory Comparisons
  • cmp()
  • cmpfiles()
  • clear_cache()
  • The dircmp class
    • dircmp
      • report()
      • report_partial_closure()
      • report_full_closure()
      • left
      • right
      • left_list
      • right_list
      • common
      • left_only
      • right_only
      • common_dirs
      • common_files
      • common_funny
      • same_files
      • diff_files
      • funny_files
      • subdirs
    • DEFAULT_IGNORES
• tempfile — Generate temporary files and directories
  • TemporaryFile()
  • NamedTemporaryFile()
  • SpooledTemporaryFile
    • rollover()
  • TemporaryDirectory
    • name
    • cleanup()
  • mkstemp()
  • mkdtemp()
  • gettempdir()
  • gettempdirb()
  • gettempprefix()
  • gettempprefixb()
  • tempdir
  • Examples
  • Deprecated functions and variables
    • mktemp()
• glob — Unix style pathname pattern expansion
  • glob()
  • iglob()
  • escape()
• fnmatch — Unix filename pattern matching
  • fnmatch()
  • fnmatchcase()
  • filter()
  • translate()
• linecache — Random access to text lines
  • getline()
  • clearcache()
  • checkcache()
  • lazycache()
• shutil — High-level file operations
  • Directory and files operations
    • copyfileobj()
    • copyfile()
    • SameFileError
    • copymode()
    • copystat()
    • copy()
    • copy2()
    • ignore_patterns()
    • copytree()
    • rmtree()
      • avoids_symlink_attacks
    • move()
    • disk_usage()
    • chown()
    • which()
    • Error
    • Platform-dependent efficient copy operations
    • copytree example
    • rmtree example
  • Archiving operations
    • make_archive()
    • get_archive_formats()
    • register_archive_format()
    • unregister_archive_format()
    • unpack_archive()
    • register_unpack_format()
    • unregister_unpack_format()
    • get_unpack_formats()
    • Archiving example
    • Archiving example with base_dir
  • Querying the size of the output terminal
    • get_terminal_size()

See also

Module os

Operating system interfaces, including functions to work with files at a lower level than Python file objects.

Module io

Python’s built-in I/O library, including both abstract classes and some concrete classes such as file I/O.

Built-in function open()

The standard way to open files for reading and writing with Python.