Move folder contents without moving the source folder

Question

shutil.move(src, dst) is what I feel will do the job, however, as per the Python 2 documentation:

shutil.move(src, dst) Recursively move a file or directory (src) to another location (dst).

If the destination is an existing directory, then src is moved inside that directory. If the destination already exists but is not a directory, it may be overwritten depending on os.rename() semantics.

This is a little bit different than my case as below:

Before the move: https://snag.gy/JfbE6D.jpg

shutil.move(staging_folder, final_folder)

After the move: https://snag.gy/GTfjNb.jpg

This is not what I want, I want all the content in the staging folder be moved over to under folder "final" , I don't need "staging" folder itself.

Answer 1

You can use shutil.copytree() to move all contents in staging_folder to final_folder without moving the staging_folder . Pass the argument copy_function=shutil.move when calling the function.

For Python 3.8:

shutil.copytree('staging_folder', 'final_folder', copy_function=shutil.move, dirs_exist_ok=True)

For Python 3.7 and below:

beware that the paramater dirs_exist_ok is not supported. The destination final_folder must not already exist as it will be created during moving.

shutil.copytree('staging_folder', 'final_folder', copy_function=shutil.move)

Example code (Python 3.8):

>>> os.listdir('staging_folder')
['file1', 'file2', 'file3']

>>> os.listdir('final_folder')
[]

>>> shutil.copytree('staging_folder', 'final_folder', copy_function=shutil.move, dirs_exist_ok=True)
'final_folder'

>>> os.listdir('staging_folder')
[]

>>> os.listdir('final_folder')
['file1', 'file2', 'file3']

---