We Keep Coding

Using regex to move multiple files

I'm really new to python and looking to organize hundreds of files and want to use regex to move them to the correct folders.
Example: I would like to move 4 files into different folders.
File A has "USA" in the name
File B has "Europe" in the name
File C has both "USA" and "Europe" in the name
Fild D has "World" in the name
Here is what I am thinking but I don't think this is correct
shutil.move('Z:\local 1\[.*USA.*]', 'Z:\local 1\USA')
shutil.move('Z:\local 1\[.*\(Europe\).*]', 'Z:\local 1\Europe')
shutil.move('Z:\local 1\[.*World.*]', 'Z:\local 1\World')

You can list all the files in a directory and move them in a new folder if their names matches a given regular expression as follows:
import os
import re
import shutil
for filename in os.listdir('path/to/some/directory'):
if re.match(r'Z:\\local 1\\[.*USA.*]+', filename):
shutil.move(os.path.join('path/to/some/directory', filename), 'Z:\local 1\USA')
elif re.match(r'Z:\\local 1\\[.*\(Europe\).*]+', filename):
shutil.move(os.path.join('path/to/some/directory', filename), 'Z:\local 1\Euro')
# and so forth
However, os.listdir shows only the direct subfolders and files, but it does not iterate deeper. If you want to analyze all the files recursively in a given folder use the os.walk method.

According to definition of shutil.move, it needs two things:
src, which is a path of a source file
dst, which is a path to the destination folder.
It says that src and dst should be paths, not regular expressions.
What you have is os.listdir() which list files in a directory.
So what you need to do is to list files, then try to match file names against regular expressions. If you get a match, then you know where the file should go.
That said, you still need to decide what to do with option C that matches both 'USA' and 'Europe'.
For added style points you can put pairs of (regex, destination_path) into an array, tuple or map; in this case you can add any number of rules without changing or duplicating the logic.

How to best locate a directory with a prefix input by the user?

I have a directory that creates a new subfolder each day, each subfolder's name always starts with the date it was created (i.e. MMDDYY). I need to prompt the user for the date of the file they need (something they'd already have) and search for a subfolder that has a matching prefix in the name. The rest of the folder name can be ignored.
If a folder with the correct prefix is found there will be a similar prompt to locate files in the folder that have a name leading with a 5 digit number that the user would also have. Those files just need copied to a new location. I'm just getting stuck on how to locate a subfolder when I only have the prefix to the folder name and same with the file inside that folder once it's found.
For example, I'm looking for a file that generated on 1/10/2019, the file name starts with 42333. The full folder name would be something like 01102019CHA71H2HBMNN. There would be two files that are found, one with a full file name that might be 42333aaabc.xrf and the other would be 42333aaabc with no file extension. These file names could exist in multiple other folders but usually I need them for specific dates.

If I understood correctly, you need a algorithm that the input is a prefix (a string).
In Python you can make "membership" tests with strings, for example:
>>> string = "A long string"
>>> "long" in string
True
Your algorithm would work with something like:
"If {prefix as string} in {directory/file name as string}:
do something"
But if your question is how to list files inside a directory, you can do this by two libraries:
os
subprocess (by calling "ls" in Linux or "dir" in Windows)
Or you could use, also the re library which is for regular expressions. It's a bit complex but way more flexible.
Good source for debugging RegEx: https://regexr.com/
For learning RegEx in Python: https://www.w3schools.com/python/python_regex.asp
Best wishes, pal
For learning

Python Match Portion of File Name

I am trying to match file names within a folder using python so that I can run a secondary process on the files that match. My file names are such that they begin differently but match strings at some point as below:
3322_VEGETATION_AREA_2009_09
3322_VEGETATION_LINE_2009_09
4522_VEGETATION_POINT_2009_09
4422_VEGETATION_AREA_2009_09
8722_VEGETATION_LINE_2009_09
2522_VEGETATION_POINT_2009_09
4222_VEGETATION_AREA_2009_09
3522_VEGETATION_LINE_2009_09
3622_VEGETATION_POINT_2009_09
Would regex be the right approach to matching those files after the first underscore or am I overthinking this?

import glob
files = glob.glob("*VEGETATION*")
should do the trick. It should find all files in the current directory that contain "VEGETATION" somewhere in the filename

Python regular expression to match a file name. Using os.walk() to get a file name

I'm using os.walk() to get files name. What I need to do is to create a list with files name that match following patterns:
if '*' will match all files.
if 'h*' will match all files beginning with h.
if '*h' will match all files ending with h.
if '*h*' will match all files that have h in them.
if [h-w]* will match any one character in set, including set negation [^h-w]
I'm new with regular expression and I have troubles with creating an if statement for this issue. May some explain it to me (maybe with code examples) how to do it. Thanks.

I tried fnmatch, and it's working perfectly, a Big Thanks to Charles Duffy.
Here is my code:
for dp, dn, filenames in os.walk(path):
for ff in filenames:
if fnmatch.fnmatch(ff, 'My patterns here'):
list.append(os.path.join(dp, ff))

Regular Expressions in Python for match files in a folder

I want to match all the files in a folder using regular expressions for some reason:
I used this:
re.compile(r'\.*$')
But this is also matching hidden files and temp files.
Is there a better option?

This makes the assumption that you're wanting to do something with these file names. As someone mentioned in the comments you should use glob. Since I'm not sure what you're going for with the 'temp' files this was the simplest thing. It will return no hidden files. Files is a list of file paths from your current working directory.
import os, glob
files = [f for f in glob.glob('./*') if os.path.isfile(f)]

Try re.compile(r'\w+\.*\w*') to match alphanumeric file names with a possible dot extension.
\w+ matches one or more alphanumeric file names [a-zA-Z0-9_]
\.* matches zero or more '.' characters
\w* matches zero or more file extension alphanumeric characters.
Kodos is an excellent Python regular expression developer/debugger.

Get all files from a directory just using this:
import os
files = [f for p, d, f in os.walk('/foo/bar')][0]