I need to append standard header contents to the top of all of my python files

Question

So, I have a bunch of python files (hundreds actually) that need a comment header at the top that contains the product name, a license reference notice, copyright information and other things. What is the best way to do this in a batch-like way? In other words, is there a tool I can use to specify what the header will be and what directory to apply this header to along with a *.py filter or something along those lines? By the way, all of the header info is identical for every file.

Answer 1

If instead of the batch approach you would rather use python itself, a very simplified version could be written as:

import os, sys

def main():
    HEADER = '''# Author: Rob
# Company: MadeupOne
# Copyright Owner: Rob
'''

    filelist = []
    for path, dir, files in os.walk(sys.argv[1]):
        for file in files:
            if file.endswith('.py'):
                filelist.append(path + os.sep + file)

        for filename in filelist:
            try:
                inbuffer = open(filename, 'U').readlines()
                outbuffer = [HEADER] + inbuffer

                open(filename, 'wb').writelines(outbuffer)
            except IOError:
                print 'Please check the files, there was an error when trying to open %s...' % filename
            except:
                print 'Unexpected error ocurred while processing files...'

if __name__ == '__main__': main()

Just pass the directory containing the files you want to alter and it will recursively prepend HEADER to all .py files on the path.