[python] Telling Python to save a .txt file to a certain directory on Windows and Mac

How do you tell Python where to save a text file?

For example, my computer is running the Python file off my desktop. I want it to save all the text file in my documents folder, not on my desktop. How do I do that in a script like this?

name_of_file = raw_input("What is the name of the file: ")
completeName = name_of_file + ".txt"
#Alter this line in any shape or form it is up to you.
file1 = open(completeName , "w")

toFile = raw_input("Write what you want into the field")

file1.write(toFile)

file1.close()

Another simple way without using import OS is,

outFileName="F:\\folder\\folder\\filename.txt"
outFile=open(outFileName, "w")
outFile.write("""Hello my name is ABCD""")
outFile.close()

Just give your desired path if file does not exist earlier;

        from os.path import abspath
        with open ('C:\\Users\\Admin\\Desktop\\results.txt', mode = 'w') as final1:
            print(final1.write('This is my new file.'))

        print(f'Text has been processed and saved at {abspath(final1.name)}')

Output will be:

Text has been processed and saved at C:\Users\Admin\Desktop\results.txt

If you want to save a file to a particular DIRECTORY and FILENAME here is some simple example. It also checks to see if the directory has or has not been created.

import os.path
directory = './html/'
filename = "file.html"
file_path = os.path.join(directory, filename)
if not os.path.isdir(directory):
    os.mkdir(directory)
file = open(file_path, "w")
file.write(html)
file.close()

Hope this helps you!

Use os.path.join to combine the path to the Documents directory with the completeName (filename?) supplied by the user.

import os
with open(os.path.join('/path/to/Documents',completeName), "w") as file1:
    toFile = raw_input("Write what you want into the field")
    file1.write(toFile)

If you want the Documents directory to be relative to the user's home directory, you could use something like:

os.path.join(os.path.expanduser('~'),'Documents',completeName)

Others have proposed using os.path.abspath. Note that os.path.abspath does not resolve '~' to the user's home directory:

In [10]: cd /tmp
/tmp

In [11]: os.path.abspath("~")
Out[11]: '/tmp/~'

Using an absolute or relative string as the filename.

name_of_file = input("What is the name of the file: ")
completeName = '/home/user/Documents'+ name_of_file + ".txt"
file1 = open(completeName , "w")
toFile = input("Write what you want into the field")
file1.write(toFile)
file1.close()

A small update to this. raw_input() is renamed as input() in Python 3.

Python 3 release note

Just use an absolute path when opening the filehandle for writing.

import os.path

save_path = 'C:/example/'

name_of_file = raw_input("What is the name of the file: ")

completeName = os.path.join(save_path, name_of_file+".txt")         

file1 = open(completeName, "w")

toFile = raw_input("Write what you want into the field")

file1.write(toFile)

file1.close()

You could optionally combine this with os.path.abspath() as described in Bryan's answer to automatically get the path of a user's Documents folder. Cheers!