
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`` --- Iterate over lines from multiple input streams
* ``stat`` --- Interpreting ``stat()`` results
* ``filecmp`` --- File and Directory Comparisons
  * The ``dircmp`` class
* ``tempfile`` --- Generate temporary files and directories
  * Examples
* ``glob`` --- Unix style pathname pattern expansion
* ``fnmatch`` --- Unix filename pattern matching
* ``linecache`` --- Random access to text lines
* ``shutil`` --- High-level file operations
  * Directory and files operations
    * copytree example
  * Archiving operations
    * Archiving example
* ``macpath`` --- Mac OS 9 path manipulation functions
See also:

   Module ``os``
      Operating system interfaces, including functions to work with
      files at a lower level than Python *file objects*.

   Module ``io``
      Python's built-in I/O library, including both abstract classes
      and some concrete classes such as file I/O.

   Built-in function ``open()``
      The standard way to open files for reading and writing with
      Python.
