A program for backing up documents (doesnt work(code is inside))

[Richard_SS]

The programm should create a backup of selected folder into a folder with a name as current data, and backed up archive should be named as current time. When running a programm im getting a following error: "zip error: Nothing to do! (D://Backup/20190310/165535.zipC://justfolder C://justfolder2.zip)"
What am i doing wrong?
p.s. im not native english speaker, so, dont ,please, scold me for mistakes, if there are some :D

Here is the code of program:

import os
import time

source = ['"C://justfolder "','C://justfolder2']
target_dir = 'D://Backup'
today = target_dir + os.sep + time.strftime('%Y%m%d')
now = time.strftime('%H%M%S')

if not os.path.exists(today):

    os.mkdir(today) #make directory
    print('Successfully created directory', today)
else:
    print("Already exists")

target = today + os.sep + now + '.zip'

zip_command = "zip -r {0}{1}". format(target,''.join(source))

if os.system(zip_command) == 0 :
    print('Successful backup to', target)
else:
    print('Backup Failed')

[Larz60+]

This is much better done using pathlib
Please give step details of what you want to do like:

• copy all files in ...
  
• create new dir ...
  
• zip contents of ... to ...
  

I'm not sure what source = ['"C://justfolder "','C://justfolder2'] is supposed to be doing.

[Richard_SS]

This is much better done using pathlib
Please give step details of what you want to do like:

• copy all files in ...
  
• create new dir ...
  
• zip contents of ... to ...
  

I'm not sure what source = ['"C://justfolder "','C://justfolder2'] is supposed to be doing.

What can cause an "zip error: Nothing to do! " error?

[woooee]

You can use the builtin zipfile https://www.tutorialspoint.com/How-to-cr...ing-Python but if you are backing up directory(s) use tarfile https://www.tutorialspoint.com/How-to-cr...ing-Python

[heiner55]

With some tiny changes, your program runs well.

#!/usr/bin/python3
import os
import time

source = ['"C:/justfolder "','C:/justfolder2']
target_dir = 'D:/Backup'

today = target_dir + os.sep + time.strftime('%Y%m%d')
now = time.strftime('%H%M%S')
.
if not os.path.exists(today):
    os.mkdir(today) #make directory
    print('Successfully created directory', today)
else:
    print("Already exists")
.
target = today + os.sep + now + '.zip'
.
zip_command = "zip -r {0} {1}". format(target,' '.join(source))
print(zip_command)

if os.system(zip_command) == 0 :
    print('Successful backup to', target)
else:
    print('Backup Failed')