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gh-125676: Make shutil documentation consistent about copy2/copy behavior and remove ambiguity #137792

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gh-125676: Make shutil documentation consistent about copy2/copy behavior and remove ambiguity #137792

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9f3e372
gh-125676:clarify shutil.copy2/copy behavior and move fallback
tangyuan0821 Aug 15, 2025
3335e89
Update shutil.move documentation
tangyuan0821 Aug 19, 2025
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15 changes: 9 additions & 6 deletions Doc/library/shutil.rst
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Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -204,9 +204,13 @@ Directory and files operations
*src* symbolic link to the newly created *dst* symbolic link.
However, this functionality is not available on all platforms.
On platforms where some or all of this functionality is
unavailable, :func:`copy2` will preserve all the metadata
it can; :func:`copy2` never raises an exception because it
cannot preserve file metadata.
unavailable, :func:`copy2` will preserve as much metadata as it
can. However, individual metadata-copy operations (for example
changing ownership or setting certain flags) may fail on some
platforms or when the current process lacks privileges; such
failures can raise exceptions. If you need to avoid metadata-related
errors, use :func:`~shutil.copy`, which copies file data and the
permission bits but does not attempt to preserve other metadata.

:func:`copy2` uses :func:`copystat` to copy the file metadata.
Please see :func:`copystat` for more information
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -390,9 +394,8 @@ Directory and files operations
*src* and the destination, and will be used to copy *src* to the destination
if :func:`os.rename` cannot be used. If the source is a directory,
:func:`copytree` is called, passing it the *copy_function*. The
default *copy_function* is :func:`copy2`. Using :func:`~shutil.copy` as the
*copy_function* allows the move to succeed when it is not possible to also
copy the metadata, at the expense of not copying any of the metadata.
default *copy_function* is :func:`copy2`. Any copy function with a signature
compatible with copy2() can be used (for instance, :func:`~shutil.copy`).

.. audit-event:: shutil.move src,dst shutil.move

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