Creates a series of folders from a given starting date

OK let's look at your code.

Unused Imports

pathlib was imported but I don't see any use of it in the codebase, I understand that this might be as a result of testing out approaches to a problem. pylint can help mitigate this by catching unused modules. It also catches some PEP guidelines which your code breaks.

Avoid Globals

You have lots of global variables. A common approach whenever you want to use a global is asking yourself some questions; "How do I express myself with code whilst avoiding this global variable". When in doubt, prefer objects that holds state to global variables.

Code Review

On first glance, I can see you are manually parsing dates. This doesn't look good, you introduce bugs when reinventing the wheel. Right now, your code contains a bug, it accepts invalid dates, I can easily create a date like this date = "12-03-202022" The above code generates no error, this can be disastrous. A common alternative is using python datetime module. This simplify everything, we can move the dates by periods easily, creating directories becomes quite easy.

NOTE: datetime module checks for invalid dates.

A simple way of creating a date from a string is given as

from datetime import datetime date = datetime.strptime(start_date, "%d/%m/%y") 

This simple line of code simplifies everything, the full code can then be written as

"""Directory creating program""" import os from datetime import datetime, timedelta def next_date(date, period): """Increase the date by timedelta date: datetime object period: timedelta to increase our date by """ new_date = date + timedelta(days=period) return '/'.join((str(new_date.day), str(new_date.month), str(new_date.year))), new_date def make_directories(home_dir, start_date, instances, period): """Create sub directories in the home_dir home_dir: base directory start_date: date to append to directories created instances: number of directories to create period: difference between two dates """ date = datetime.strptime(start_date, "%d/%m/%y") for i in range(instances): start_date = start_date.replace('/', '-') dirpath = os.path.join(directory, start_date,'Documentation') try: os.makedirs(dirpath) except FileExistsError: print('Directory {} already exists'.format(dirpath)) else: print('Directory {} created'.format(dirpath)) start_date, date = next_date(date, period) if __name__ == "__main__": directory = "/Users/myName/Box Sync/SAFAC/Budget Requests/2020-2021/Weekly/" make_directories(directory, '3/1/20', 10, 5) 

Hard-coded paths

It looks like you started off asking for this:

directory = input("Enter the path where you would like to create files: ") 

but then changed your mind:

directory = "/Users/myName/Box Sync/SAFAC/Budget Requests/2020-2021/Weekly/" 

The latter style of hard-coded directories should be avoided. Accept the directory via input, or (more likely) via argparse.

Unit specificity

Enter the period between each date folder 

is not specific enough. Period in days, months, years? A combined timedelta format? Based on your code it looks like days, but your prompt should specify.

Datetime parsing

Don't do split-based date parsing like this:

dayArgument = arguments[1] monthArgument = arguments[0] yearArgument = arguments[2] 

Instead, call into one of the parsing routines in datetime. Beyond that, mm-dd-yyyy is both non-standard and non-sortable. Strongly consider using yyyy-mm-dd instead.

Likewise, rather than

def add_folder_to_list(month,day,year,extra): full_name_constructor = (month,day,year,extra) # full_name_constructor = (str(month),str('0'+str(day)),yearArgument,"Budgets") fullName = seperator.join(full_name_constructor) 

just use the built-in datetime format routines.

Pathlib

You import it, but you don't use it here:

 dirpath = os.path.join(directory, folderName[0:],'Documentation') 

Best to replace your join with a / operator on a Path instance.

Spelling

seperator -> separator

Bugs

There are a few (potential) bugs in you program: check_month() doesn't handle leap years and the code doesn't handle roll over at the end of a year.

datetime

Using datetime from the standard library can fix these bugs and simplify the code. datetime.date() provides methods for parsing and formating date strings. And datetime.timedelta() for adding an interval or period to a date.

Using the library, your code can be simplified to something like:

from datetime import date, timedelta from pathlib import Path template = input(f"Enter a directory template (use DD for day, MM for month, YYYY for year): ") template = template.replace('YYYY', '{0:%Y}').replace('MM', '{0:%m}').replace('DD', '{0:%d}') start = input(f"Enter a start date (yyyy-mm-dd): ") current_date = date.fromisoformat(start) period = input("Enter the number of days between each date folder: ") period = timedelta(days=int(period)) count = int(input(f"Enter the number of folders to create: ")) for _ in range(count): path = Path(template.format(current_date)) try: path.mkdir(parents=True) except FileExistsError: print(f'Directory {path} already exists.') else: print(f'Directory {path} created.') current_date += period 

Using a template provides some flexibility in telling the code what directories to create. The template gets turned into a format string by replacing codes in the template with formatting codes for the components of a date. For example, 'YYYY' in the template gets replaced with '{0:%Y}'. When the format string is used to format a date, the {0:%Y} gets replaced with the 4-digit year. 'DD' and 'MM' are use for the day and month respectively. Letting the user enter a code like 'YYYY' and then replacing it with the format code is just to sanitize the user input.

The date.fromisoformat() parses a date in the YYYY-MM-DD format and returns a date object. If you really need to use DD-MM-YYYY format, also import datetime from the datetime library and use start = datetime.strptime(start, "%d-%m-%Y").date().

I prefer using pathlib, so I used that in the code. os.path would work just as well.

User experience (UX)

With some additional effort, the user experience can be improved. For example, default values can be provided for some inputs. As another, a stop date can be used instead of a number of periods (quick: how many weeks are there between 2021-01-08 and 2021-08-01?).

from datetime import date, timedelta from pathlib import Path DEFAULT_TEMPLATE = "/Users/myName/Box Sync/SAFAC/Budget Requests/2020-2021/Weekly/DD-MM-YYYY-Budgets/Documentation" DEFAULT_START = dt.date.today() DEFAULT_PERIOD = 7 # days DEFAULT_COUNT = 1 # a str print("Enter the following (defaults are in [])") template = input(f" Directory template (use DD for day, MM for month, YYYY for year)\n[{DEFAULT_TEMPLATE}]: ") if template == '': template = DEFAULT_TEMPLATE template = template.replace('YYYY', '{0:%Y}').replace('MM', '{0:%m}').replace('DD', '{0:%d}') start = input(f" Start date (yyyy-mm-dd) [{DEFAULT_START}]: ") if start: date = dt.date.fromisoformat(start) else: date = DEFAULT_START period = input(f" Number of days between each date folder [{DEFAULT_PERIOD}]: ") if period == '': period = DEFAULT_PERIOD period = dt.timedelta(days=int(period)) end = input(f" Number of folders or a stop date (yyyy-mm-dd) [{DEFAULT_COUNT}]: ") if end == '': end = date + period * DEFAULT_COUNT elif '-' in end: end_date = dt.date.fromisoformat(end) else: end_date = date + period * int(end) while date < end_date: path = Path(template.format(date)) try: path.mkdir(parents=True) except FileExistsError: print(f'Directory {path} already exists.') else: print(f'Directory {path} created.') date += period 

In the code, the prompts include the default value in '[]'. If the user just hits ENTER, the default values get used. The code for determining the end_date uses the default number of periods if the user doesn't enter anything. Otherwise, it checks to see if the user entered a date or a count and does the appropriate conversion.

I agree with most if not all the points made by other answers thus far so I won't rehash their answers. Here are some additional points.

• Use type hints. They will save you (or the next person who has to look at this script) in the long run.
• Using Clean Code principles, break down responsibility into smaller functions.
• Check to see if the file that already exists is indeed a folder.

# Trying to make a folder and catching the exception when it already exists # is a good idea except when the thing that already exists is a FILE not a FOLDER. def make_directory(value: str): try: os.makedirs(value) except OSError as e: if e.errno == errno.EEXIST and os.path.isdir(value): pass else: raise 

• Avoid unnecessary actions. Use init = 0 instead of init = instances - instances
• if day < 10 and month >= 10: can be written as if day < 10 <= month:
• If you're using globals, it's a good sign you should create a class.