How to split a dos path into its components in Python

Question

I have a string variable which represents a dos path e g   var    d  stuff morestuff furtherdown THEFILE txt   I want to split this string into      d    stuff    morestuff    furtherdown    THEFILE txt     I have tried using split   and replace   but they either only process the first backslash or they insert hex numbers into the string   I need to convert this string variable into a raw string somehow so that I can parse it   What s the best way to do this   I should also add that the contents of var i e  the path that I m trying to parse  is actually the return value of a command line query  It s not path data that I generate myself  Its stored in a file  and the command line tool is not going to escape the backslashes

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I would do  import os path   os path normpath path  path split os sep    First normalize the path string into a proper string for the OS  Then os sep must be safe to use as a delimiter in string function split

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I can t actually contribute a real answer to this one  as I came here hoping to find one myself   but to me the number of differing approaches and all the caveats mentioned is the surest indicator that Python s os path module desperately needs this as a built-in function

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I ve been bitten loads of times by people writing their own path fiddling functions and getting it wrong  Spaces  slashes  backslashes  colons -- the possibilities for confusion are not endless  but mistakes are easily made anyway  So I m a stickler for the use of os path  and recommend it on that basis   However  the path to virtue is not the one most easily taken  and many people when finding this are tempted to take a slippery path straight to damnation  They won t realise until one day everything falls to pieces  and they -- or  more likely  somebody else -- has to work out why everything has gone wrong  and it turns out somebody made a filename that mixes slashes and backslashes -- and some person suggests that the answer is  quot not to do that quot   Don t be any of these people  Except for the one who mixed up slashes and backslashes -- you could be them if you like   You can get the drive and path file like this  drive  path and file   os path splitdrive path   Get the path and the file  path  file   os path split path and file   Getting the individual folder names is not especially convenient  but it is the sort of honest middling discomfort that heightens the pleasure of later finding something that actually works well  folders      while 1      path  folder   os path split path       if folder     quot  quot           folders append folder      elif path     quot  quot           folders append path           break  folders reverse     This pops a  quot   quot  at the start of folders if the path was originally absolute  You could lose a bit of code if you didn t want that

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For a somewhat more concise solution  consider the following   def split path p       a b   os path split p      return  split path a  if len a  and len b  else        b

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One recursive for the fun   Not the most elegant answer  but should work everywhere   import os  def split path path       head   os path dirname path      tail   os path basename path      if head    os path dirname head           return  tail      return split path head     tail

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I use the following as since it uses the os path basename function it doesn t add any slashes to the returned list  It also works with any platform s slashes  i e window s      or unix s    And furthermore  it doesn t add the          that windows uses for server paths    def SplitPath  split path        pathSplit lst            while os path basename split path           pathSplit lst append  os path basename split path            split path   os path dirname split path      pathSplit lst reverse       return pathSplit lst  So for         server    folder1    folder2    folder3    folder4  You get    server   folder1   folder2   folder3   folder4

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The problem here starts with how you re creating the string in the first place   a    d  stuff morestuff furtherdown THEFILE txt    Done this way  Python is trying to special case these   s   m   f  and  T   In your case   f is being treated as a formfeed  0x0C  while the other backslashes are handled correctly   What you need to do is one of these   b    d   stuff  morestuff  furtherdown  THEFILE txt         doubled backslashes c   r d  stuff morestuff furtherdown THEFILE txt            raw string  no doubling necessary   Then once you split either of these  you ll get the result you want

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You can simply use the most Pythonic approach  IMHO    import os  your path   r d  stuff morestuff furtherdown THEFILE txt  path list   your path split os sep  print path list   Which will give you     d     stuff    morestuff    furtherdown    THEFILE txt     The clue here is to use os sep instead of      or      as this makes it system independent   To remove colon from the drive letter  although I don t see any reason why you would want to do that   you can write   path list 0    path list 0  0

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Below line of code can handle    C  path path C   path  path C  path path C  path path   path   re split r          path

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You can recursively os path split the string  import os def parts path       p f   os path split path      return parts p     f  if f else  p    Testing this against some path strings  and reassembling the path with os path join   gt  gt  gt  for path in               r d  stuff morestuff furtherdown THEFILE txt                 path to file txt                relative path to file txt               r C  path to file txt               r   host share path to file txt                      print parts path   os path join  parts path          d       stuff    morestuff    furtherdown    THEFILE txt   d  stuff morestuff furtherdown THEFILE txt        path    to    file txt    path to file txt       relative    path    to    file txt   relative path to file txt   C       path    to    file txt   C  path to file txt           host    share    path    to    file txt     host share path to file txt   The first element of the list may need to be treated differently depending on how you want to deal with drive letters  UNC paths and absolute and relative paths  Changing the last  p  to  os path splitdrive p   forces the issue by splitting the drive letter and directory root out into a tuple   import os def parts path       p f   os path split path      return parts p     f  if f else  os path splitdrive p       d            stuff    morestuff    furtherdown    THEFILE txt                path    to    file txt               relative    path    to    file txt      C            path    to    file txt                   host    share    path    to    file txt     Edit  I have realised that this answer is very similar to that given above by user1556435  I m leaving my answer up as the handling of the drive component of the path is different

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Let assume you have have a file filedata txt with content   d  stuff morestuff furtherdown THEFILE txt d  otherstuff something otherfile txt   You can read and split the file paths    gt  gt  gt  for i in open  filedata txt   readlines            print i strip   split              d     stuff    morestuff    furtherdown    THEFILE txt     d     otherstuff    something    otherfile txt

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use ntpath split

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Adapted the solution of  Mike Robins avoiding empty path elements at the beginning  def parts path       p f   os path split os path normpath path       return parts p     f  if f and p else  p  if p else     os path normpath   is actually required only once and could be done in a separate entry function to the recursion

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It works for me    gt  gt  gt  a r d  stuff morestuff furtherdown THEFILE txt   gt  gt  gt  a split         d     stuff    morestuff    furtherdown    THEFILE txt     Sure you might need to also strip out the colon from the first component  but keeping it makes it possible to re-assemble the path   The r modifier marks the string literal as  raw   notice how embedded backslashes are not doubled

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re split   can help a little more then string split    import re     var    d  stuff morestuff furtherdown THEFILE txt  re split  r         var     d     stuff    morestuff    furtherdown    THEFILE txt     If you also want to support Linux and Mac paths  just add filter None result   so it will remove the unwanted    from the split   since their paths starts with     or       for example    mount      or   var tmp    import re     var     var stuff morestuff furtherdown THEFILE txt  result   re split  r         var   filter  None  result     var    stuff    morestuff    furtherdown    THEFILE txt

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In Python   3 4 this has become much simpler  You can now use pathlib Path parts to get all the parts of a path   Example    gt  gt  gt  from pathlib import Path  gt  gt  gt  Path  C  path to file txt   parts   C       path    to    file txt    gt  gt  gt  Path r C  path to file txt   parts   C       path    to    file txt     On a Windows install of Python 3 this will assume that you are working with Windows paths  and on  nix it will assume that you are working with posix paths  This is usually what you want  but if it isn t you can use the classes pathlib PurePosixPath or pathlib PureWindowsPath as needed    gt  gt  gt  from pathlib import PurePosixPath  PureWindowsPath  gt  gt  gt  PurePosixPath   path to file txt   parts        path    to    file txt    gt  gt  gt  PureWindowsPath r C  path to file txt   parts   C       path    to    file txt    gt  gt  gt  PureWindowsPath r   host share path to file txt   parts       host  share      path    to    file txt     Edit  There is also a backport to python 2 available  pathlib2

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The functional way  with a generator   def split path        drive  head    os path splitdrive path      while  head    os sep            head  tail    os path split head          yield tail   In action    gt  gt  gt  print  x for x in split os path normpath   path to filename        filename    to    path

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The stuff about about mypath split       would be better expressed as mypath split os sep   sep is the path separator for your particular platform  e g     for Windows    for Unix  etc    and the Python build knows which one to use  If you use sep  then your code will be platform agnostic

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Just like others explained - your problem stemmed from using    which is escape character in string literal constant  OTOH  if you had that file path string from another source  read from file  console or returned by os function  - there wouldn t have been problem splitting on      or r      And just like others suggested  if you want to use   in program literal  you have to either duplicate it    or the whole literal has to be prefixed by r  like so r lite ral  or r lite ral  to avoid the parser converting that   and r to CR  carriage return  character   There is one more way though - just don t use backslash   pathnames in your code  Since last century Windows recognizes and works fine with pathnames which use forward slash as directory separator    Somehow not many people know that   but it works    gt  gt  gt  var    d  stuff morestuff furtherdown THEFILE txt   gt  gt  gt  var split        d     stuff    morestuff    furtherdown    THEFILE txt     This by the way will make your code work on Unix  Windows and Mac    because all of them do use   as directory separator    even if you don t want to use the predefined constants of module os

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I m not actually sure if this fully answers the question  but I had a fun time writing this little function that keeps a stack  sticks to os path-based manipulations  and returns the list stack of items  def components path       ret          while len path   gt  0          path  crust   split path          ret insert 0  crust      return ret

[python] How to split a dos path into its components in Python

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