Introduction to Common Python File Handling Modules: os, shutil, and zipfile

This article provides a concise tutorial on three essential Python modules for file handling: os, shutil, and zipfile. It explains their main capabilities and includes ready‑to‑run code snippets.

os module offers functions for interacting with the operating system, especially file‑path operations via os.path. Example usage:

# Import the module
import os

# Get current working directory
print("Current working directory:", os.getcwd())

# Get absolute path of a relative path
print("Absolute path:", os.path.abspath("."))
print(os.path.abspath(".."))
print(os.path.abspath("hello.py"))

# Relative path from a start point
print(os.path.relpath("C:\\"))
print(os.path.relpath("C:\\", "hello.py"))

# Check if a path exists
print("File exists:", os.path.exists("hello.py"))

shutil module provides high‑level operations for copying, moving, and removing files and directories, as well as handling archive files. Example usage:

import shutil
# Copy a file
shutil.copy("write_test.txt", "write_test_copy.txt")

# Copy a directory
shutil.copytree("source_dir", "dest_dir")

# Move a file or directory
shutil.move("source", "destination")

# Remove a directory tree
shutil.rmtree("dir_to_remove")

zipfile module enables creation and extraction of ZIP archives. Example usage:

import zipfile, os, glob
# Create a zip archive
fileZip = zipfile.ZipFile("archive.zip", "w")
for name in glob.glob("my_folder/*"):
    fileZip.write(name, os.path.basename(name), zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED)
fileZip.close()

# Extract the archive
unpack_zip = zipfile.ZipFile("archive.zip")
unpack_zip.extractall("extracted_folder")
unpack_zip.close()

By mastering these modules, developers can efficiently perform common file system tasks, automate file management, and handle compression tasks directly within Python scripts.