Python – Accessing Relative Path

pathpython

I'm running a Mac OS X environment and am used to using ~/ to provide the access to the current user's directory.

For example, in my python script I'm just trying to use

os.chdir("/Users/aaron/Desktop/testdir/")

But would like to use

os.chdir("~/Desktop/testdir/")

I'm getting a no such file or directory error when trying to run this. Any ideas?

Best Answer

You'll need to use os.path.expanduser(path)

os.chdir("~/Desktop/testdir/") is looking for a directory named "~" in the current working directory.

Also pay attention to the documentation of that function - specifically that you'll need the $HOME environment variable set properly to ensure that the expansion takes place. Most of the time this wont be a problem but if the expansion doesn't take place, that's the likely reason.

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try os.path.abspath, it should do what you want ;)

Basically it converts any given path to an absolute path you can work with, so you do not need to distinguish between relative and absolute paths, just normalize any of them with this function.

Example:

from os.path import abspath
filename = abspath('../../fold_temp/myfile.txt')
print(filename)

It will output the absolute path to your file.

EDIT:

If you are using Python 3.4 or newer you may also use the resolve() method of pathlib.Path. Be aware that this will return a Path object and not a string. If you need a string you can still use str() to convert it to a string.

Example:

from pathlib import Path
filename = Path('../../fold_temp/myfile.txt').resolve()
print(filename)

Best Answer

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