For anyone new to Python, here’s a simple script to help copy files of a particular extension type to another location.

My scenario was to copy a bunch of ISO images from my Linux box to my MacBook. Sure I could have mounted the Linux box, selected all the files and do the simple drag-and-drop to my DVD library. As I did that, I noticed ALL the files were being copied at the same time. This was causing way too much “back and forth” of the drive head on the server as it attempted to copy various bits and bytes of each file.

I wanted a way to copy each ISO, one at a time, without me having to wait for each copy to complete to begin the next ISO. This sounds like a job for a script! So here’s the Python script I put together to accomplish the task. At least the drive head on the server wasn’t getting thrashed! And now I could continue doing other tasks.

import os
import fnmatch

for movie in os.listdir('/Volumes/sda1'):
	if fnmatch.fnmatch(movie, '*.ISO'):
		print movie
		os.system("cp /Volumes/sda1/%s ." % movie)

Substitute *.ISO with your own file extension. You can also put in any valid UNIX command in the os.system() function to do your bidding.

More details on these Python modules can be found here:

os module
fnmatch module