How do I get the path of the current executed file in Python

Question

This may seem like a newbie question  but it is not  Some common approaches don t work in all cases   sys argv 0   This means using path   os path abspath os path dirname sys argv 0     but this does not work if you are running from another Python script in another directory  and this can happen in real life     file    This means using path   os path abspath os path dirname   file      but I found that this doesn t work    py2exe doesn t have a   file   attribute  but there is a workaround When you run from IDLE with execute   there is no   file   attribute OS X 10 6 where I get NameError  global name    file    is not defined   Related questions with incomplete answers    Python - Find Path to File Being Run Path to current file depends on how I execute the program How to know the path of the running script in Python  Change directory to the directory of a Python script   I m looking for a generic solution  one that would work in all above use cases   Update  Here is the result of a testcase   Output of python a py  on Windows   a py    file    a py a py  os getcwd    C  zzz  b py  sys argv 0   a py b py    file    a py b py  os getcwd    C  zzz   a py      usr bin env python import os  sys  print  a py  sys argv 0     sys argv 0  print  a py    file        file   print  a py  os getcwd      os getcwd   print  execfile  subdir b py     subdir b py      usr bin env python import os  sys  print  b py  sys argv 0     sys argv 0  print  b py    file        file   print  b py  os getcwd      os getcwd   print   tree  C       a py  ---subdir         b py

User · Answer

import os current file path os path dirname os path realpath    file

User · Answer

First  you need to import from inspect and os  from inspect import getsourcefile from os path import abspath   Next  wherever you want to find the source file from you just use  abspath getsourcefile lambda 0

User · Answer

You can use Path from the pathlib module   from pathlib import Path         Path   file      You can use call to parent to go further in the path   Path   file    parent

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The short answer is that there is no guaranteed way to get the information you want  however there are heuristics that work almost always in practice  You might look at How do I find the location of the executable in C   It discusses the problem from a C point of view  but the proposed solutions are easily transcribed into Python

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See my answer to the question Importing modules from parent folder for related information  including why my answer doesn t use the unreliable   file   variable  This simple solution should be cross-compatible with different operating systems as the modules os and inspect come as part of Python   First  you need to import parts of the inspect and os modules     from inspect import getsourcefile from os path import abspath   Next  use the following line anywhere else it s needed in your Python code   abspath getsourcefile lambda 0     How it works   From the built-in module os  description below   the abspath tool is imported        OS routines for Mac  NT  or Posix depending on what system we re on    Then getsourcefile  description below  is imported from the built-in module inspect        Get useful information from live Python objects     abspath path  returns the absolute full version of a file path getsourcefile lambda 0  somehow gets the internal source file of the lambda function object  so returns   lt pyshell nn gt   in the Python shell or returns the file path of the Python code currently being executed    Using abspath on the result of getsourcefile lambda 0  should make sure that the file path generated is the full file path of the Python file  This explained solution was originally based on code from the answer at How do I get the path of the current executed file in Python

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You can t directly determine the location of the main script being executed   After all  sometimes the script didn t come from a file at all   For example  it could come from the interactive interpreter or dynamically generated code stored only in memory   However  you can reliably determine the location of a module  since modules are always loaded from a file   If you create a module with the following code and put it in the same directory as your main script  then the main script can import the module and use that to locate itself   some path module locator py   def we are frozen          All of the modules are built-in to the interpreter  e g   by py2exe     return hasattr sys   frozen    def module path        encoding   sys getfilesystemencoding       if we are frozen            return os path dirname unicode sys executable  encoding       return os path dirname unicode   file    encoding     some path main py   import module locator my path   module locator module path     If you have several main scripts in different directories  you may need more than one copy of module locator   Of course  if your main script is loaded by some other tool that doesn t let you import modules that are co-located with your script  then you re out of luck   In cases like that  the information you re after simply doesn t exist anywhere in your program   Your best bet would be to file a bug with the authors of the tool

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My solution is   import os print os path dirname os path abspath   file

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If the code is coming from a file  you can get its full name  sys  getframe   f code co filename   You can also retrieve the function name as f code co name

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You have simply called   path   os path abspath os path dirname sys argv 0      instead of   path   os path dirname os path abspath sys argv 0      abspath   gives you the absolute path of sys argv 0   the filename your code is in  and dirname   returns the directory path without the filename

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This should do the trick in a cross-platform way  so long as you re not using the interpreter or something    import os  sys non symbolic os path realpath sys argv 0   program filepath os path join sys path 0   os path basename non symbolic     sys path 0  is the directory that your calling script is in  the first place it looks for modules to be used by that script   We can take the name of the file itself off the end of sys argv 0   which is what I did with os path basename   os path join just sticks them together in a cross-platform way  os path realpath just makes sure if we get any symbolic links with different names than the script itself that we still get the real name of the script   I don t have a Mac  so  I haven t tested this on one  Please let me know if it works  as it seems it should  I tested this in Linux  Xubuntu  with Python 3 4  Note that many solutions for this problem don t work on Macs  since I ve heard that   file   is not present on Macs    Note that if your script is a symbolic link  it will give you the path of the file it links to  and not the path of the symbolic link

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this solution is robust even in executables  import inspect  os path  filename   inspect getframeinfo inspect currentframe    filename path       os path dirname os path abspath filename

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I was running into a similar problem  and I think this might solve the problem   def module path local function          returns the module path without the use of   file     Requires a function defined    locally in the module     from http   stackoverflow com questions 729583 getting-file-path-of-imported-module       return os path abspath inspect getsourcefile local function     It works for regular scripts and in idle  All I can say is try it out for others   My typical usage   from toolbox import module path def main       pass   Do stuff  global   modpath     modpath     module path main    Now I use   modpath   instead of   file

User · Answer

Simply add the following   from sys import   path to current file   sys argv 0  print path to current file    Or   from sys import   print sys argv 0

[python] How do I get the path of the current executed file in Python?

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