Question

Say I have an input file, and a target directory. How do I determine if the input file is on the same hard-drive (or partition) as the target directory?

What I want to do is the copy a file if it’s on a different, but move it if it’s the same. For example:

target_directory = '/Volumes/externalDrive/something/' input_foldername, input_filename = os.path.split(input_file) if same_partition(input_foldername, target_directory):     copy(input_file, target_directory) else:     move(input_file, target_directory) 

Answer 1

In C, you would use stat() and compare the st_dev field. In python, os.stat should do the same.

import os def same_partition(f1, f2):     return os.stat(f1).st_dev == os.stat(f2).st_dev