shutil.move does not work properly with pathlib.Path objects #83321

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1. LucaPaganin commented on Dec 26, 2019

   

   LucaPaganinmannequin

   on Dec 26, 2019

   MannequinAuthor

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   Suppose you have two pathlib objects representing source and destination of a move:

   src=pathlib.Path("foo/bar/barbar/myfile.txt")
   dst=pathlib.Path("foodst/bardst/")

   If you try to do the following

   shutil.move(src, dst)

   Then an AttributeError will be raised, saying that PosixPath objects do not have an rstrip attribute. The error is the following:

   Traceback (most recent call last):
     File "mover.py", line 10, in <module>
       shutil.move(src, dst)
     File "/Users/lucapaganin/opt/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/shutil.py", line 562, in move
       real_dst = os.path.join(dst, _basename(src))
     File "/Users/lucapaganin/opt/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/shutil.py", line 526, in _basename
       return os.path.basename(path.rstrip(sep))
   AttributeError: 'PosixPath' object has no attribute 'rstrip'

   Looking into shutil code, line 526, I see that the problem happens when you try to strip the trailing slash using rstrip, which is a method for strings, while PosixPath objects do not have it. Moreover, pathlib.Path objects already manage for trailing slashes, correctly getting basenames even when these are present.
   The following two workarounds work:

   1. Explicit cast both src and dst as string using

   shutil.move(str(src), str(dst))

   This work for both the cases in which dst contains the destination filename or not.

   2. Add the filename to the end of the PosixPath dst object:

   dst=pathlib.Path("foodst/bardst/myfile.txt")

   Then do

   shutil.move(src, dst)

   Surely one could use the method pathlib.Path.replace for PosixPath objects, which does the job without problems, even if it requires for dst to contain the destination filename at the end, and lacks generality, since it bugs when one tries to move files between different filesystems.
   I think that you should account for the possibility for shutil.move to manage pathlib.Path objects even if one does not provide the destination filename, since the source of the bug is due to a safety measure which is not necessary for pathlib.Path objects, i.e. the managing of the trailing slash.
   Do you think that is possible? Thank you in advance.

   Luca Paganin

   P.S.: I attach a tarball with the dirtree I used for the demonstration.
2. LucaPaganin

   added

   3.7 (EOL)end of lifeend of life

   type-bugAn unexpected behavior, bug, or errorAn unexpected behavior, bug, or error

   on Dec 26, 2019
3. tirkarthi commented on Dec 27, 2019

   

   tirkarthi

   on Dec 27, 2019

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   This is a duplicate of https://bugs.python.org/issue32689 that is fixed in 3.9 . Using os.fspath on path object is more correct here instead of str so that objects with both __str__ and __fspath__ implemented are handled properly.
4. tirkarthi

   closed this as completedon Dec 27, 2019
5. ezio-melotti

   transferred this issue fromon Apr 10, 2022