Meet Fylex: The Smartest File Copy Tool You've Never Used (Yet)

#python #opensource #productivity #devtools

✨ "What if cp could think?"

🧠 That’s the question that led to Fylex — a fast, filterable, fault-tolerant file copier built for developers who want more than just shutil.copy().

🚀 Why I Built Fylex

As a Python developer, I often needed to move thousands of files across systems, sometimes skipping duplicates, filtering intelligently, or resolving name collisions. The options?

Bash cp – fast, but dumb.
shutil.copytree() – okay for basic use, but lacks conflict resolution or filtering.
Third-party tools – either bloated, GUI-only, or just… underwhelming.

So I built Fylex — a Python CLI tool that copies files smartly, using hashing, regex filtering, multi-threading, and intelligent conflict resolution.

🧩 What Makes Fylex Special?

Here’s what Fylex brings to the table:

Feature	Why It Matters
✅ Hash-based comparison	No false duplicates. Truly content-aware.
🎯 Regex + glob filtering	Copy only what you need. Like a laser.
🧠 Intelligent conflict handling	Rename, skip, replace (by size/date), or prompt
🚦 Interactive mode	Confirm every action, if you choose to
🔄 Dry run	Preview changes without doing them
🧵 Multi-threaded performance	Speeds up massive file transfers
📝 Verbose logging	Clear, timestamped logs. Debug with ease.
📁 Preserves metadata	Uses `shutil.copy2()` to keep timestamps, etc.

📦 Install in Seconds

pip install fylex

⚙️ How to Use It (Simple Example)

fylex --src myfiles --dest backup --match-glob "*.txt" --on-conflict rename

🔁 This copies all .txt files to backup/, renaming any that conflict.

Filter via regex, run dry, avoid duplicates, and log everything:

fylex --src . --dest ../mirror --match-regex "^[a-z]+\.py$" --on-conflict skip --dry-run --verbose

🧠 Why It’s Smarter Than the Rest

Other tools blindly copy files or use modification timestamps at best. Fylex goes deeper — it hashes files using xxhash, compares content, skips what doesn’t need copying, and ensures the target is always correct.

🔐 Oh — and it verifies every copy, retrying intelligently if a mismatch is detected.