Modern Python Standard Library Cookbook

How it works...

shutil.copytree will retrieve the content of the provided directory through os.listdir. For every entry returned by listdir, it will check whether it's a file or a directory.

If it's a file, it will copy it through the shutil.copy2 function (it's actually possible to replace the used function by providing a copy_function argument), if it's a directory, copytree itself is called recursively.

The ignore argument is then used to build a function that, once called, will return all the files that need to be ignored given a provided pattern:

>>> f = shutil.ignore_patterns('*.rtc', '*.stylelog') >>> f('_build', ['_build/pdf/PySTLCookbook.pdf', '_build/pdf/PySTLCookbook.rtc', '_build/pdf/PySTLCookbook.stylelog']) {'_build/pdf/PySTLCookbook.stylelog', ...