I have a bunch of files within a separate drive, a D: drive. My goal was to move all jpg, png, and gif files to a ‘images’ folder and all mp4, mov files to a ‘videos’ folder; except for files within a particular folder.

This is what I used

import os
import shutil

# Locations 
mainLoc = r"D:folder"
secLoc = r"D:foldersubfolder" # These are the files to exclude in the shutil.move
imageLoc = r"D:folderImages"
videoLocation = r"D:folderVideos"
# Paths
parentPath = os.path.join(mainLoc)
imagePath = os.path.join(mainLoc, imageLoc)
videoPath = os.path.join(mainLoc, videoLoc)
# Extension types
imageExtensions = {
    ".jpg",
    ".png",
    ".gif"
}
videoExtensions = {
    ".mov",
    ".mp4",
}
# Move files 
file = []
while file not in os.listdir(secLoc):
    for file in os.listdir(parentPath):
        filePath = os.path.join(parentPath, file)
        if os.path.isfile(filePath):
            extension = os.path.splitext(file)[1].lower()
        if extension in imageExtensions:
            shutil.move(filePath, imagePath)
        if extension in videoExtensions:
            shutil.move(filePath, videoPath)

I think I should’ve replaced filePath at the end with file. When I ran the code, all the files in the loop disappeared, leaving me with only two files Images and Videos inside D:folder. But I had already created an Images file and Videos file before I ran the code, so I’m surprised to see nothing actually went to those folders.

Is there any hope I can recover the files? I understand shutil.move does not delete files, so there has to be something I can do.