files.File – File manipulation

class files.File([path])

The File class provides functions for common opperations on files, such as moving, deleting, and changing the permissions of a file.

If path is passed, the File object represents the object at that path. path may be a string or a Path object. Otherwise, a new temporary file is created.

File.access([mode])

If mode is not provided, returns a string that might contain r, w, or x. These correspond to read, write, and execute permissions for the current user.

If mode is given, it may contain r, w, or x. The returned value will be True if the current user has all of the given permissions and False otherwise.

File.last_access()

File.last_change()

File.ctime()

All of these methods return the epoch (Unix) time of the last access and change of the file, and the system’s ctime (Which differs between Unix and Windows).

File.move(new)

Moves the file to the location defined by new which can be a string, a Path object, or another File object.

File.rename(new)

Renames the file to have the name new. Note that new should not contain any slashes: move() should be used move files to new directories.

File.chown([uid, gid])

Changes file ownership to the given User ID (uid) and Group ID (gid). If either is not passed, that part of the ownership is unchanged.

files.chmod(user="", group="", other="", *extra)

Change the file permissions to those given, where each of user, group, and other are strings containing (perhaps) r, w, and x. The arguments "uid", "gid", and "vtx" may also be passed to set those permission bits.

File.chflags(*flags)

The arguments passed may contain any of:

• "no dump"
• "immutable"
• "append"
• "opaque"
• "no unlink"
• "archived"
• "system immutable"
• "system append"
• "system no unlink"
• "snapshot"

Consult the chflags manpage for a description of these. If you don’t know what they are, chances are you’ll never have to call this function.

File.open([mode="r"])

Open the file to recieve a file-like object. The mode is mode

File.size()

Get the size of the file.

File.create()

Create an empty file at the path represented by this File object if it does not exist already.

File.delete()

Delete (unlink) the file

File.copy(dest)

Copy this file to the place represented by dest, which may be a string, a Path object, or a File object.

Two File‘s may be compared with the == operator to determine if they are the same file (resolving hard links) and with the < and > operators to sort them alphabetically.

File.name

The name of the file, including the extension. Setting it will result in the file being renamed.