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Making and breaking file paths in Python

See: https://docs.python.org/3.5/library/os.path.html

• os.path
• dirname, basename, join, splitext, abspath

>>> import os.path

In IPython, you can tab complete on os.path to list the functions and attributes there.

The first function we will use from os.path is dirname. To avoid typing os.path.dirname all the time, import the dirname function directly into the current name-space, by using the from module import ... version of the import command:

>>> from os.path import dirname
>>> dirname
<function dirname at 0x...>

>>> # This gives "os.path.dirname" the name "dirname"
>>> os.path.dirname
<function dirname at 0x...>
>>> dirname is os.path.dirname
True

The dirname function gives the directory name from a full file path. It works correctly for Unix paths on Unix machines, and Windows paths on Windows machines:

>>> # On Unix
>>> dirname('/a/full/path/then_filename.txt')
'/a/full/path'

Note

Windows, backslash and strings

On Windows, we have the extra problem that Python uses the backslash character in strings to indicate a special character follows. For example the string "Tab \t, newline \n" contains a tab character and a newline character, indicated by "\t" and "\n". So we need to prepend a backslash to each backslash we want in the output string:

>>> # On Windows
>>> dirname('c:\\a\\full\\path\\then_filename.txt') 
'c:\\a\\full\\path'

dirname also works for relative paths, A relative path where the starting directory is relative to the current directory, rather than absolute, in terms of the root of the file system:

>>> # On Unix
>>> dirname('relative/path/then_filename.txt')
'relative/path'

Use basename to get the filename rather than the directory name:

>>> from os.path import basename
>>> # On Unix
>>> basename('/a/full/path/then_filename.txt')
'then_filename.txt'

Sometimes you want to join one or more directory names with a filename to get a path. Windows and Unix have different characters to separate directories in a path. Windows uses the backslash: \, Unix uses a forward slash: /. If your code will run on Windows and Unix, you need to take care that you get the right character joining your paths. This is what os.path.join does:

>>> from os.path import join
>>> # On Unix
>>> join('relative', 'path', 'then_filename.txt')
'relative/path/then_filename.txt'

This also works on Windows:

>>> # On Windows
>>> join('relative', 'path', 'then_filename.txt')  
'relative\\path\\then_filename.txt'

To convert a relative to an absolute path, use abspath:

>>> from os.path import abspath
>>> # Show the current working directory
>>> os.getcwd()  #doctest: +SKIP
/Users/mb312/dev_trees/psych-214-fall-2016
>>> abspath('relative/path/then_filename.txt')  #doctest: +SKIP
/Users/mb312/dev_trees/psych-214-fall-2016/relative/path/then_filename.txt

Use splitext to split a path into: the path + filename; and the file extension:

>>> from os.path import splitext
>>> splitext('relative/path/then_filename.txt')
('relative/path/then_filename', '.txt')