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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.

See Also:

Module `os`:
  Operating system interfaces, including functions to work with files at a lower level than the built-in file object.