Why this matters: This information matters because regex allows devs to check whether a pattern exists in a given text, and shutil allows for high level file operations.
1. How can you use regular expressions in Python to search for specific patterns in a string, and what is the primary library to work with them?
A specific sequence of characters in a regular expression is used to check for patterns in a string. The primary library used to work with regex is re.
2. What is the purpose of the shutil library in Python, and provide an example of a common use case for file or directory management with this library?
The shutil module is used for high-level file operations like copying and archiving. For example copyfile() copies the contents of the source to the destination and raises IOError if it does not have permission to write to the destination file.
3. Explain one automation idea from the assigned material and describe how it can be implemented using Python’s regular expressions and shutil libraries.
File copying - copying a file from one location to another.
With regex: name the pattern and then use this script:
for filename in file_list:
if re.search(pattern, filename):
# copy the file
With shutil: iterate over the files and check extensions, then use the shutil.copy() function:
for filename in file_list:
if filename.endswith('.txt'):
# Copy the file
shutil.copy(filename, '/path/to/destination')
Nothing at the moment!