synching with os.walk()

[Paddy]

Paddy wrote:

> Andre Meyer wrote:
>
> > Hi all
> >
> > os.walk() is a nice generator for performing actions on all files in a
> > directory and subdirectories. However, how can one use os.walk() for walking
> > through two hierarchies at once? I want to synchronise two directories (just
> > backup for now), but cannot see how I can traverse a second one. I do this
> > now with os.listdir() recursively, which works fine, but I am afraid that
> > recursion can become inefficient for large hierarchies.
> >
> > thanks for your help
> > André
>
> Walk each tree individually gathering file names relative to the head
> of the tree and modification data.
>
> compare the two sets of data to generate:
>  1. A list of what needs to be copied from the original to the copy.
>  2. A list of what needs to be copied from the copy to the original
>
> Do the copying.
>
> |You might want to show the user what needs to be done and give them
> the option of aborting after generating the copy lists.
>
> - Paddy.
P.S. If you are on a Unix type system you can use tar to do the copying
as you can easily compress the data if it needs to go over a sow link,
and tar will take care of creating any needed directories in the
destination if you create new directories as well as new files.
- Paddy.