Python: Regex file search with shutil using an excel file

Question

I have a program I am writing for an internal employee that takes a CSV file and searches a file server for the files listed in the CSV then copys each file to a folder in the desktop. The issue I am running into with my current code is that the CSV must hold the exact names but instead I need to regex search this and copy the files with file names like the ones in the CSV.

file name in excel looks like: D6957-QR-1452

file name on server looks like: WM_QRLabels_D6957-QR-1452_11.5x11.5_M.pdf

from tkinter import filedialog, messagebox
import openpyxl
import tkinter as tk
from pathlib import Path
import shutil
import os


desktop = Path.home() / "Desktop/Comps"

tk.messagebox.showinfo("Select a directory","Select a directory" )
folder = filedialog.askdirectory()
root = tk.Tk()


root.title("Title")


lbl = tk.Label(
    root, text="Open the excel file that includes files to search for")
lbl.pack()

frame = tk.Frame(root)
frame.pack()
scrollbar = tk.Scrollbar(frame)
scrollbar.pack(side=tk.RIGHT, fill=tk.Y)
listbox = tk.Listbox(frame, yscrollcommand=scrollbar.set)


def load_file():
    wb_path = filedialog.askopenfilename(filetypes=[('Excel files', '.xlsx')])
    wb = openpyxl.load_workbook(wb_path)
    global sheet
    sheet = wb.active

    listbox.pack()
    file_names = [cell.value for row in sheet.rows for cell in row]
    for file_name in file_names:
        listbox.insert('end', file_name)
    return file_names  # <--- return your list 
    
            



def search_folder(folder, file_name):
    # Create an empty list to store the found file paths
    found_files = []
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(folder):
        for file in files:
            if file in file_name:
                found_files.append(os.path.join(root, file))
                shutil.copy2(file, desktop)

    return found_files


excelBtn = tk.Button(root, text="Open Excel File",
                     command=None)
excelBtn.pack()


zipBtn = tk.Button(root, text="Copy to Desktop",
                   command=search_folder(folder, load_file()))
zipBtn.pack()


root.mainloop()


Program is able to find and copy exact file names but unable to file *like* files. 

Answer 1

Change your search_folder method to something like this:

def search_folder(folder, file_name):
    # Create an empty list to store the found file paths
    found_files = []
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(folder):
        for file in files:
            for file_pattern in file_name:
                if file.find(file_pattern) > -1:
                    replaced_backslashes = re.sub(r"\\+", "/", os.path.join(root, file), 0, re.MULTILINE)
                    found_files.append(replaced_backslashes)
                    shutil.copy2(file, desktop)

    return found_files

Basically, for every file we iterate over the file_name array to test all the patterns.

For the test we use find method, that in case it matches, returns the position of the found substring.

That is, if searching for 'foo', all these files would be returned:

zazfoo
foobar
zazfoobar
foo