shutilcopy

The shutil.copy function in Python is part of the built-in shutil module, which provides high-level operations on files and collections of files. Specifically, shutil.copy is used to copy the contents of a source file to a destination file.

When shutil.copy is called, it takes two arguments: the path to the source file and the path to the destination. If the destination is an existing directory, the source file will be copied into that directory with the same base name. If the destination is a file path, the source file will be copied to that location, overwriting the destination file if it already exists.

It is important to note that shutil.copy only copies the file's data. It does not copy metadata such as file permissions, timestamps, or ownership. For a more complete copy operation that includes metadata, the shutil.copy2 function should be used instead. The shutil.copy function is suitable for simple file duplication tasks where preserving metadata is not a requirement. The function returns the path to the newly created file.