homedir, file copy

[MRAB]

On 31/01/2011 00:18, ecu_jon wrote:
> On Jan 30, 7:09 pm, MRAB<pyt... at mrabarnett.plus.com>  wrote:
>> On 30/01/2011 23:43, ecu_jon wrote:
>>
>>> ok now i get permission denied....
>>
>>> import os
>>> homedir = os.path.expanduser('~')
>>> try:
>>>       from win32com.shell import shellcon, shell
>>>       homedir = shell.SHGetFolderPath(0, shellcon.CSIDL_APPDATA, 0, 0)
>>
>>> except ImportError:
>>>       homedir = os.path.expanduser("~")
>>> print homedir
>>> print os.listdir(homedir+"\\backup\\")
>>> #homedir.replace("\\\\" , "\\")
>>> #print homedir
>>> backupdir1 = os.path.join(homedir, "backup")
>>> backupdir2 = os.path.join(homedir, "backup2")
>>> shutil.copy (backupdir1, backupdir2)
>>
>> shutil.copy(...) copies files, not directories. You should use
>> shutil.copytree(...) instead.
>
> i will, closer towards the end.
> just wanted to get past the naming stuff, the problem above.
> right now i just want to see it move files from 1 place to another.
> i had copytree in before, and will go back to that for final version.
> im working on a backup program, and copytree looks yummy.
>
> still no idea why getting permission denied.

The path given by backupdir1 is a directory, so you're trying to use
shutil.copy(...) to copy a directory.

The reason that it's complaining about permissions is that shutil.copy
is trying to open the source file (look at the traceback) so that it
can copy the file's contents, but it's not a file, it's a directory.

CPython is written in C, so it's probably the underlying C library
which is reporting it as a permissions problem instead of a "that's not
a file!" problem. :-)