Write function fcopy() that takes two file name inputs and copies the content of the first file into the second using Python

Question

So I did:

def fcopy(original, copy):
'creates a copy of file original named copy'
    infile = open(original)
    content = infile.read()
    print(content)

But this only print out what's in the original file. No clue how to copy the content of original to the copy file.

First you can just use [shutil](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/123198/how-do-i-copy-a-file-in-python). For this though you need to [open the copy file and write to it](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5214578/python-print-string-to-text-file) — LinkBerest, Oct 01 '15 at 02:02
@JGreenwell I think you can post this as an answer, this maybe what's OP looking for. — Remi Guan, Oct 01 '15 at 02:03

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 01 '15 at 02:06

You need to open another file for writing and write to that one. The new file does not need to exist beforehand. I recommend you read this for an overview of file handling: https://docs.python.org/2/tutorial/inputoutput.html

As far as writing a function for this goes, here's a function that should work (note that this overwrites the file you're copying to):

def fcopy(original_file, copy_file):
    with open(original_file, 'r') as readf, open(copy_file, 'w') as writef:
        writef.write(readf.read())

Write function fcopy() that takes two file name inputs and copies the content of the first file into the second using Python

1 Answers1