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Author newbie
Recipients docs@python, newbie
Date 2014-11-24.17:10:35
SpamBayes Score -1.0
Marked as misclassified Yes
Message-id <1416849036.72.0.766895523282.issue22933@psf.upfronthosting.co.za>
In-reply-to
Content
First sentence of 3rd paragraph of 10.10. "shutil" documentation for shutil.move command, "The destination directory must not already exist", is misleading and contradicts other information in the entry.  I took it to mean that if dst did not exist, python would create it as a directory.  What actually happens is that python renames src to dst. In my test, I was moving several files to a new directory, and the result was a file with the pathname dst and contents matching the last move command, consistent with the behavior described in the rest of the paragraph and the following one. When I changed the code to create the directory with os.mkdirs before calling shutil.move, it worked as I wanted, so obviously there's nothing wrong with the destination directory already existing. The preceding paragraph implies this with its description of behavior when dst refers to a directory.  I suggest removing this sentence, and maybe adding some text indicating what to do if you want to move a file to a new directory.
I was using Python 2.7.5 on Windows, and branch 2.7.8 of the documentation (there does not appear to be a branch 2.7.5 available.)
History
Date User Action Args
2014-11-24 17:10:36newbiesetrecipients: + newbie, docs@python
2014-11-24 17:10:36newbiesetmessageid: <1416849036.72.0.766895523282.issue22933@psf.upfronthosting.co.za>
2014-11-24 17:10:36newbielinkissue22933 messages
2014-11-24 17:10:35newbiecreate