shutil

shutil is a Python standard library module that provides high-level operations on files and collections of files. It sits atop the os module and offers a portable interface for common file-system tasks across platforms such as Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Key capabilities include copying and moving files, removing directories, and handling archives. Core functions include copyfile and copy2 (the latter preserves metadata), copy for convenience, copytree for directory trees, move for renaming or relocating, and rmtree for recursive deletion. Archiving is supported via make_archive to create archives (zip, tar, etc.) and unpack_archive to extract them. Other utilities include disk_usage for disk statistics, get_terminal_size for terminal dimensions, and which to locate an executable in the system path. For metadata handling, copystat copies permission bits and timestamps. The module also provides an Error exception for reporting issues and an optional onerror callback used by copytree to handle errors without stopping the entire operation.

Because it relies on the standard library, shutil favors cross-platform compatibility and works with both path strings and path-like objects from pathlib. It is commonly used for file management tasks in scripts, test environments, and applications requiring portable file-system operations.