file copy portability

[Bob Smith]

Is shutil.copyfile(src,dst) the *most* portable way to copy files with
Python? I'm dealing with plain text files on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX.

Thanks!

[Peter Hansen]

Bob Smith wrote:

Is shutil.copyfile(src,dst) the *most* portable way to copy files with
Python? I'm dealing with plain text files on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX.

Yes, provided you don't need any of the features provided by the
other shutil.copy functions, and assuming you can live with the
Caveat listed in the docs for the MacOS system...

-Peter

[Steve Holden]

Bob Smith wrote:

Is shutil.copyfile(src,dst) the *most* portable way to copy files with
Python? I'm dealing with plain text files on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX.

Thanks!

Yes.

regards
Steve
--
Steve Holden http://www.holdenweb.com/
Python Web Programming http://pydish.holdenweb.com/
Holden Web LLC [phone] [phone]

[John Machin]

Bob Smith wrote:

Is shutil.copyfile(src,dst) the *most* portable way to copy files with Python? I'm dealing with plain text files on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX.
Thanks!

Portable what? Way of copying??

Do you want your files transferred (a) so that they look like native
text files on the destination system, or (b) so that they are exact
byte-wise copies?

A 5-second squint at the source (Lib/shutil.py) indicates that it
provides, reliably and portably, option b:
fsrc = open(src, 'rb')
fdst = open(dst, 'wb')

One way of doing option (a): you would need to be running Python on the
destination system, open the src file with 'rU', open the dst file with
'w'.

[Bob Smith]

John Machin wrote:

Bob Smith wrote:

Is shutil.copyfile(src,dst) the *most* portable way to copy files

with

Python? I'm dealing with plain text files on Windows, Linux and Mac

OSX.

Thanks!

Portable what? Way of copying??

Do you want your files transferred (a) so that they look like native
text files on the destination system, or (b) so that they are exact
byte-wise copies?

A 5-second squint at the source (Lib/shutil.py) indicates that it
provides, reliably and portably, option b:
fsrc = open(src, 'rb')
fdst = open(dst, 'wb')

One way of doing option (a): you would need to be running Python on the
destination system, open the src file with 'rU', open the dst file with
'w'.

The files are not copied from one platform to the other. The app must
run on all platforms. I want to make the app as portable as possible to
reduce platform specific code.