Python File Sorter Help

[SgtBot]

Hi,

I am working on a file sorter in python to sort different file types into their respective folders so I can go through them later. Here is my code so far:

import os

loop = 'y'

while loop == 'y':
    count = 0
    
    fileType = input("What type of file would you like to sort? ")
    
    fileList = []

    for files in os.walk("."):
        for filename in files[2]:
            fileList.append(filename)

    for i in range(len(fileList)):
        if fileList[i].split('.')[1] == fileType:
            if i == 0:
                try:
                    os.mkdir(fileType)
                except FileExistsError:
                    print("File already exists, continuing...")
                    pass
            os.system("move "+fileList[i]+" "+fileType)
            count = count+1
        else:
            break

    if count != 0:
        print("Moved", count, "file(s) into folder:", fileType)
    else:
        print("No files matching that type.")
        
    loop = input("\nSort more files? (y/n): ")

It works great, but the only problem that I have is that it seems to bug out whenever the file name itself has a space in it. For example, when I tried to make it move a .docx document with the title: AS121 - HW10 - REGULATORY GUIDANCE, CERTIFICATES AND DOCUMENTS-2.docx, it said it moved the file, but did nothing instead. Here is a screenshot of cmd while it's running:

I'm not sure why it would be doing this... I checked the fileList and split lines in my code, and it seems to split that word document perfectly fine into the name and the docx. Here is a screenshot of that:

 

I'm not sure why it could be doing this. Do I have to have some kind of error handling to tell the program what to do when there is a space in the file name? I feel like it shouldn't matter since I don't split the file by spaces I split it by a period. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Egad]

Use os.rename or shutil.move to actually move the file.  Those commands will handle white space escaping for you.

 

You might also find filename, file_extension = os.path.splitext a useful command.  Because splitting on period is going to fail on "my.file.has.periods.docx"

[wasab]

Yeah, Windows cmd and also Unix terminals do not handle files names with spaces too well. You should enclose them in single quotes.

 

Like this: 'this is a file name with spaces.txt'

[SgtBot]

8 minutes ago, Egad said:

Use os.rename or shutil.move to actually move the file.  Those commands will handle white space escaping for you.

I switched to shutil.move for the command, so the new code looks like:

for i in range(len(fileList)):
        if fileList[i].split('.')[1] == fileType:
            if i == 0:
                try:
                    os.mkdir(fileType)
                except FileExistsError:
                    print("File already exists, continuing...")
                    pass
            shutil.move(fileList[i], fileType)
            count = count+1
        else:
            break

But when I try to run the program in my folder, it doesn't even recognize that there are any word documents. I tried to run it in an empty folder with that one word document and it worked... but it seems when in needs to sort through multiple files it has problems.

 

[vorticalbox]

13 hours ago, Egad said:

Use os.rename or shutil.move to actually move the file.  Those commands will handle white space escaping for you.

 

You might also find filename, file_extension = os.path.splitext a useful command.  Because splitting on period is going to fail on "my.file.has.periods.docx"

not if you always take from the end of the array with 

ex = filename.split('.')[-1]