Question

There are some problems in my python program.

I want to open a directory, choose the oldest file and then copy the file to another directory.

I read the documents where “shutil” is mentioned, but I don’t know how to choose the oldest one.

Could someone help me solve this problem?

Answer 1

The following example compares modification date, but you can of course change it to get other file-related times by changing the definition of gt to os.path.getctime or os.path.getatime, for example.

import os, shutil

fromdir = '/home/mac/Desktop'
todir = '/home/mac/Desktop/tmp'
gt = os.path.getmtime  #change if you want something else
oldest = min([(f, gt(f)) for f in os.listdir(fromdir)])[0]
shutil.move(fromdir + '/' + oldest, todir)