fsspec / fsspec/filesystem_spec

Wrong behaviour of fs.get in "Directory to existing directory" case

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Description

Problem:
fs.get copies source dir inside target dir but expected to copy content of source dir into target dir.
case 1e of the doc

Script to reproduce error:

import os

from fsspec import filesystem
from fsspec.implementations.dirfs import DirFileSystem

DATA_PATH = "dir"
REMOTE_PATH = "data/remote"
LOCAL_PATH = "data/local"


def init_test():
    # remote
    os.makedirs(REMOTE_PATH, exist_ok=True)
    data_dir = os.path.join(REMOTE_PATH, DATA_PATH)
    os.makedirs(data_dir, exist_ok=True)
    with open(os.path.join(data_dir, "f.txt"), "w") as f:
        f.write("hello world")

    # local
    os.makedirs(LOCAL_PATH, exist_ok=True)


def test():
    fs = filesystem("file")
    fs = DirFileSystem(REMOTE_PATH, fs)

    # copy from data/remote/dir to data/local/dir
    # first leads to data/local/dir/dir/f.txt if called 2 times
    fs.get(DATA_PATH, os.path.join(LOCAL_PATH, DATA_PATH), recursive=True)


init_test()
test()

After calling script 2 times I have following dir structure:

data
├── local
│   └── dir
│       └── dir
│           └── f.txt
└── remote
    └── dir
        └── f.txt

Expected to have following:

data
├── local
│   └── dir
│       └── f.txt
└── remote
    └── dir
        └── f.txt

Extra info:
fsspec 2025.5.1

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  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by running the reproduction script and inspect DirFileSystem.get with the filesystem-spec documentation's case 1e. Compare the destination behavior on repeated calls with the expected directory layout. Done means copying the source directory into an existing target places f.txt at data/local/dir/f.txt without creating data/local/dir/dir.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
backend
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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