Python: Using shutil.move or os.rename to move folders

Question

I have written a script to move video files from one directory to another, it will also search sub directories using os.walk. however if the script finds a video file it will only move the file and not the containing folder. i have added an if statement to check if the containing folder is different to the original search folder. i cant find the code to actually move(or rename?) the folder and file to a different directory. i have read/watch a lot on moving files and there is a lot of information on that, but i cant find anything for moving folders. i have tried using shutil.move and os.rename and i get an error both times. when i try and search for the problem i get a lot of results about how to move files, or how to change the current working directory of python. any advice(even how to phrase the google search to accuratly describe how to find a tutorial on the subject) would be really appreciated. it's my first real world python program and ive learnt a lot but this last step is we…

Accepted Answer

Looks like you're only moving files, without doing anything about the folders. So if you try to move

```
C:\Users\Jeremy\Downloads\anime\pokemon.avi
```

to

```
H:\Movies from download folder\anime\pokemon.avi
```

it will fail because there's no `anime` directory on `H:\` yet.

Before iterating through `files`, iterate through `dirs` to ensure that the directory exists at your destination, creating it if necessary.

```
for root, dirs, files in os.walk(dir_src):
    for dir in dirs:
        dest_dir = os.path.join(dir_dst, dir)
        if not os.path.isdir(dest_dir):
            os.mkdir(dest_dir)
    for file in files:
    #rest of code goes here as usual...
```

Python: Using shutil.move or os.rename to move folders

Solution

Problem