11. File and Directory Access

The modules described in this chapter deal with disk files and directories. For example, there are modules for reading the properties of files, manipulating paths in a portable way, and creating temporary files. The full list of modules in this chapter is:

os.path		Common pathname manipulations.
fileinput		Perl-like iteration over lines from multiple input streams, with ``save in place'' capability.
stat		Utilities for interpreting the results of os.stat(), os.lstat() and os.fstat().
statvfs		Constants for interpreting the result of os.statvfs().
filecmp		Compare files efficiently.
tempfile		Generate temporary files and directories.
glob		Unix shell style pathname pattern expansion.
fnmatch		Unix shell style filename pattern matching.
linecache		This module provides random access to individual lines from text files.
shutil		High-level file operations, including copying.
dircache		Return directory listing, with cache mechanism.

Also see section 3.9 for a description of Python's built-in file objects.

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