Extract file name from path no matter what the os path format

Question

Which Python library can I use to extract filenames from paths  no matter what the operating system or path format could be   For example  I d like all of these paths to return me c   a b c  a b c  a b c  a b c  a b c a b       a b c  a b       a b c

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If your file path not ended with     and directories separated by     then use the following code  As we know generally path doesn t end with       import os path str     var www index html  print os path basename path str     But in some cases like URLs end with     then use the following code  import os path str     home some str last str   split path   path str rsplit     1  print os path basename split path 0      but when your path sperated by     which you generally find in windows paths then you can use the following codes  import os path str    c   var www index html  print os path basename path str    import os path str    c   home some str last str    split path   path str rsplit      1  print os path basename split path 0      You can combine both into one function by check OS type and return the result

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If you want to get the filename automatically you can do  import glob  for f in glob glob   your path          print os path split f  -1

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os path split is the function you are looking for  head  tail   os path split   tmp d a dat     gt  gt  gt  print tail  a dat  gt  gt  gt  print head   tmp d

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In both Python 2 and 3  using the module pathlib2   import posixpath    to generate unix paths from pathlib2 import PurePath  PureWindowsPath  PurePosixPath  def path2unix path  nojoin True  fromwinpath False          From a path given in any format  converts to posix path format     fromwinpath True forces the input path to be recognized as a Windows path  useful on Unix machines to unit test Windows paths         if not path          return path     if fromwinpath          pathparts   list PureWindowsPath path  parts      else          pathparts   list PurePath path  parts      if nojoin          return pathparts     else          return posixpath join  pathparts    Usage   In  9   path2unix  lala lolo haha dat   Out 9     lala    lolo    haha dat    In  10   path2unix r C  lala lolo haha dat   Out 10     C       lala    lolo    haha dat    In  11   path2unix r C  lala lolo haha dat     works even with malformatted cases mixing both Windows and Linux path separators Out 11     C       lala    lolo    haha dat     With your testcase   In  12   testcase   paths     a b c     a b c      a  b  c      a  b  c      a  b  c                     a b       a b c     a b       a b c    In  14   for t in testcase               print path2unix t  -1                     c c c c c c c   The idea here is to convert all paths into the unified internal representation of pathlib2  with different decoders depending on the platform  Fortunately  pathlib2 includes a generic decoder called PurePath that should work on any path  In case this does not work  you can force the recognition of windows path using fromwinpath True  This will split the input string into parts  the last one is the leaf you are looking for  hence the path2unix t  -1    If the argument nojoin False  the path will be joined back  so that the output is simply the input string converted to a Unix format  which can be useful to compare subpaths across platforms

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Actually  there s a function that returns exactly what you want import os print os path basename your path    WARNING  When os path basename   is used on a POSIX system to get the base name from a Windows styled path  e g   quot C   my  file txt quot    the entire path will be returned  Example below from interactive python shell running on a Linux host  Python 3 8 2  default  Mar 13 2020  10 14 16   GCC 9 3 0  on linux Type  quot help quot    quot copyright quot    quot credits quot  or  quot license quot  for more information   gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  filepath    quot C   my  path  to  file txt quot    A Windows style file path   gt  gt  gt  os path basename filepath   C   my  path  to  file txt

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If you have a number of files in a directory and want to store those file names into a list  Use the below code  import os as os import glob as glob path    mypath  file list     for file in glob glob path       data file list   os path basename file      file list append data file list

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For completeness sake  here is the pathlib solution for python 3 2     gt  gt  gt  from pathlib import PureWindowsPath   gt  gt  gt  paths     a b c     a b c      a  b  c      a  b  c      a  b  c                  a b       a b c     a b       a b c     gt  gt  gt   PureWindowsPath path  name for path in paths    c    c    c    c    c    c    c     This works on both Windows and Linux

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import os head  tail   os path split  path to file exe     tail is what you want  the filename   See python os module docs for detail

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I have never seen double-backslashed paths  are they existing  The built-in feature of python module os fails for those  All others work  also the caveat given by you with os path normpath     paths     a b c     a b c      a  b  c      a  b  c      a  b  c             a b       a b c     a b       a b c    a   b c    a b c   for path in paths      os path basename os path normpath path

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The Windows separator can be in a Unix filename or Windows Path   The Unix separator can only exist in the Unix path   The presence of a Unix separator indicates a non-Windows path   The following will strip  cut trailing separator  by the OS specific separator  then split and return the rightmost value    It s ugly  but simple based on the assumption above    If the assumption is incorrect  please update and I will update this response to match the more accurate conditions   a rstrip        if a count         0 else      split        if a count         0 else      -1    sample code   b     a b c    a b c     a  b  c     a  b  c     a  b  c   a b       a b c    a b       a b c    for a in b       print  a  a rstrip      if a count         0 else      split      if a count         0 else      -1

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In python 3   gt  gt  gt  from pathlib import Path      gt  gt  gt  Path   tmp d a dat   name  a dat

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Maybe just my all in one solution without important some new regard the tempfile for creating temporary files  D    import tempfile abc   tempfile NamedTemporaryFile dir   tmp    abc name abc name replace           split   -1     Getting the values of abc name will be a string like this    tmp tmpks5oksk7  So I can replace the   with a space  replace           and then call split    That will return a list and I get the last element of the list with  -1   No need to get any module imported

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Here s a regex-only solution  which seems to work with any OS path on any OS   No other module is needed  and no preprocessing is needed either    import re  def extract basename path        Extracts basename of a given path  Should Work with any OS Path on any OS      basename   re search r                      path    if basename      return basename group 0    paths     a b c     a b c      a  b  c      a  b  c      a  b  c             a b       a b c     a b       a b c    print  extract basename path  for path in paths       c    c    c    c    c    c    c     extra paths     C       alone     a space in filename    C   multi nline    print  extract basename path  for path in extra paths       C     alone    space in filename    multi nline     Update    If you only want a potential filename  if present  i e    a b  is a dir and so is c  windows    change the regex to  r                      For the  regex challenged   this changes the positive forward lookahead for some sort of slash to a negative forward lookahead  causing pathnames that end with said slash to return nothing instead of the last sub-directory in the pathname  Of course there is no guarantee that the potential filename actually refers to a file and for that os path is dir   or os path is file   would need to be employed   This will match as follows    a b c                nothing  pathname ends with the dir  c  c  windows            nothing  pathname ends with the dir  windows  c hello txt           matches potential filename  hello txt   it s me  bashrc      matches potential filename   bashrc  c  windows system32   matches potential filename  system32   except                       that is obviously a dir  os path is dir                         should be used to tell us for sure   The regex can be tested here

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My personal favourite is  filename   fullname split os sep  -1

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import os file location     srv volume1 data eds eds report csv  file name   os path basename file location     eds report csv location   os path dirname file location        srv volume1 data eds

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In your example you will also need to strip slash from right the right side to return c    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  path    a b c    gt  gt  gt  path   path rstrip os sep    strip the slash from the right side  gt  gt  gt  os path basename path   c    Second level    gt  gt  gt  os path filename os path dirname path    b    update  I think lazyr has provided the right answer  My code will not work with windows-like paths on unix systems and vice versus with unix-like paths on windows system

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Using os path split or os path basename as others suggest won t work in all cases  if you re running the script on Linux and attempt to process a classic windows-style path  it will fail   Windows paths can use either backslash or forward slash as path separator  Therefore  the ntpath module  which is equivalent to os path when running on windows  will work for all 1  paths on all platforms   import ntpath ntpath basename  a b c     Of course  if the file ends with a slash  the basename will be empty  so make your own function to deal with it   def path leaf path       head  tail   ntpath split path      return tail or ntpath basename head    Verification    gt  gt  gt  paths     a b c     a b c      a  b  c      a  b  c      a  b  c             a b       a b c     a b       a b c    gt  gt  gt   path leaf path  for path in paths    c    c    c    c    c    c    c        1  There s one caveat  Linux filenames may contain backslashes  So on linux  r a b c  always refers to the file b c in the a folder  while on Windows  it always refers to the c file in the b subfolder of the a folder  So when both forward and backward slashes are used in a path  you need to know the associated platform to be able to interpret it correctly  In practice it s usually safe to assume it s a windows path since backslashes are seldom used in Linux filenames  but keep this in mind when you code so you don t create accidental security holes

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This is working for linux and windows as well with standard library  paths     a b c     a b c      a  b  c      a  b  c      a  b  c             a b       a b c     a b       a b c    def path leaf path       return path strip      strip       split      -1  split       -1    path leaf path  for path in paths    Results     c    c    c    c    c    c    c

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fname   str  C  Windows paint exe   split       -1   0    this will return   paint exe     change the sep value of the split function regarding your path or OS

[python] Extract file name from path, no matter what the os/path format

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