6.7.1 The dircmp class
Description: The dircmp class
Keywords: lib

##
6.7.1 The `dircmp` class

`dircmp` instances are built using this constructor:

class `dircmp`( | a, b[, ignore[, hide]])

  Construct a new directory comparison object, to compare the directories a and b. ignore is a list of names to ignore, and defaults to `['RCS', 'CVS', 'tags']`. hide is a list of names to hide, and defaults to `[os.curdir, os.pardir]`.

The `dircmp` class provides the following methods:

`report`( | )

  Print (to `sys.stdout`) a comparison between a and b.

`report_partial_closure`( | )

  Print a comparison between a and b and common immediate subdirctories.

`report_full_closure`( | )

  Print a comparison between a and b and common subdirctories (recursively).

The `dircmp` offers a number of interesting attributes that may be used to get various bits of information about the directory trees being compared.

Note that via `__getattr__()` hooks, all attributes are computed lazilly, so there is no speed penalty if only those attributes which are lightweight to compute are used.

`left_list`
  Files and subdirectories in a, filtered by hide and ignore.

`right_list`
  Files and subdirectories in b, filtered by hide and ignore.

`common`
  Files and subdirectories in both a and b.

`left_only`
  Files and subdirectories only in a.

`right_only`
  Files and subdirectories only in b.

`common_dirs`
  Subdirectories in both a and b.

`common_files`
  Files in both a and b

`common_funny`
  Names in both a and b, such that the type differs between the directories, or names for which `os.stat()` reports an error.

`same_files`
  Files which are identical in both a and b.

`diff_files`
  Files which are in both a and b, whose contents differ.

`funny_files`
  Files which are in both a and b, but could not be compared.

`subdirs`
  A dictionary mapping names in `common_dirs` to `dircmp` objects.