Unexpected output while walking dirs

[wittempj@hotmail.com]

On Dec 28, 10:25 am, Evan Carmi <e... at binarymanipulations.com> wrote:
> hi,
>
> i am creating a program to go through a directory structure recursively
> (including directories below it) and move all files that end in .msf to
> a directory above the current level.
>
> the code i have so far is as follows:
>
> <code>
>
> #!/usr/bin/python
> #Author: Evan Carmi
> #Date: 20061101
> #Purpose: To uncorrupt Mozilla Thunderbird mail index files.
> #Version: 2.04
> top = 'f:\\test\\mail'
>
> import os, time, itertools
>
> #walk and find all files
> allfiles = []
> for root, dirs, files in os.walk(top, topdown=False):
>     for name in files:
>         allfiles.append(os.path.join(root, name))
> #remove all non .msf files
> index = []
> for match in allfiles:
>   if match.endswith('.msf'):
>     index.append(match)
> print index
> #need to fix the problem with adding folders to thunderbird
> indexdest = []
> indexdest = ['%s\\..\\..\\%s\\%s\\%s' % (x , time.strftime('%Y%m%d%H%M%S'),
> os.path.basename(os.path.normpath(x+'\\..')), os.path.basename(x)) for
> x in index]
> #\\.. to remove the ending and than basename to add it back on
> indexdest = [os.path.normpath(i) for i in indexdest]
> indexdest = [i.replace('Mail', 'backups-msf') for i in indexdest]
>
> for a, b in itertools.izip(index, indexdest):
>   os.renames(a, b)
>
> </code>
>
> if the directory structure is:
>
> -test
>   -Mail
>     -Local Folders
>     -mail.binarymanipulations.com
>
> and there are no additional directories inside of Local Folders than everything
> works and the script moves the .msf files to a directory on the same level as
> -Mail named backups-msf.
>
> the problem occurs when the directory structure:
> -test
>   -Mail
>     -Local Folders
>     -mail.binarymanipulations.com
>
> has additional directories inside of Local Folders. This results in very odd
> behavior and the directory structure looks like:
>
> -test
>   -Mail
>     -Local Folders
>     -mail.binarymanipulations.com
>     -20061228005643
>       -Local Folders
>       -mail.binarymanipulations.com
>
> after running the script.
> i hope that my problem is clear now, if you have any other information that
> would be helpful please tell me.
>  I am testing this on a w2k machine with python 2.4
>
> thanks,
> Evan

If I do get this correct - you have files like \test\Mail\somename.msf
and \test\Mail\somedirectory\someothername.msf, these files you want to
move to \test\backup\timestamp\somename.msf and
\test\backup\timestamp\somedirectory\someothername.msf.

In your code you start with collecting allfiles, and then you remove
all except *,msf files. You can do this in one step to, by collecting
only the wanted files in a listby applying the glob command from module
glob :

allfiles = []
for root, dirs, files in os.walk(top, topdown=False):
    targetfiles = glob.glob(os.path.join(root,'*.msf'))
    allfiles += targetfiles

Now allfiles contains the list of .msf files down from directory
specified in variable top. From here I would create a list of 2-tuples,
with as first element the full original filename, and as second element
the desired backupname. Note that in your code you call the clock in a
for loop, this might result in more directories.

backuproot = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(top), 'backup-msf',
time.strftime('%Y%m%d%H%M%S'))
backupfilenames = []
for f in allfiles:
    backupfilenames.append((f, os.path.join(backuproot,
os.path.basename(f))))

>From here it is easy to do the move.