Relative paths in Python

Question

I m building a simple helper script for work that will copy a couple of template files in our code base to the current directory  I don t  however  have the absolute path to the directory where the templates are stored  I do have a relative path from the script but when I call the script it treats that as a path relative to the current working directory  Is there a way to specify that this relative url is from the location of the script instead

User · Answer

Instead of using   import os dirname   os path dirname   file    filename   os path join dirname   relative path to file you want     as in the accepted answer  it would be more robust to use   import inspect import os dirname   os path dirname os path abspath inspect stack   0  1    filename   os path join dirname   relative path to file you want     because using   file   will return the file from which the module was loaded  if it was loaded from a file  so if the file with the script is called from elsewhere  the directory returned will not be correct    These answers give more detail  https   stackoverflow com a 31867043 5542253 and https   stackoverflow com a 50502 5542253

User · Answer

you need os path realpath  sample below adds the parent directory to your path   import sys os sys path append os path realpath

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As mentioned in the accepted answer   import os dir   os path dirname   file    filename   os path join dir    relative path to file you want     I just want to add that     the latter string can t begin with the backslash   infact no string   should include a backslash   It should be something like  import os dir   os path dirname   file    filename   os path join dir   relative   path   to   file   you   want     The accepted answer can be misleading in some cases   please refer to this link for details

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I m not sure if this applies to some of the older versions  but I believe Python 3 3 has native relative path support   For example the following code should create a text file in the same folder as the python script   open  text file name txt    w t      note that there shouldn t be a forward or backslash at the beginning if it s a relative path

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See sys path As initialized upon program startup  the first item of this list  path 0   is the directory containing the script that was used to invoke the Python interpreter    Use this path as the root folder from which you apply your relative path   gt  gt  gt  import sys  gt  gt  gt  import os path  gt  gt  gt  sys path 0   C   Python25  Lib  idlelib   gt  gt  gt  os path relpath sys path 0    path to libs     if you have python 2 6  gt  gt  gt  os path join sys path 0    path to libs    C   Python25  Lib  idlelib  path to libs

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Consider my code   import os   def readFile filename       filehandle   open filename      print filehandle read       filehandle close      fileDir   os path dirname os path realpath    file      print fileDir   For accessing the file in the same folder filename    same txt  readFile filename    For accessing the file in a folder contained in the current folder filename   os path join fileDir   Folder1 1 same txt   readFile filename    For accessing the file in the parent folder of the current folder filename   os path join fileDir      same txt   readFile filename    For accessing the file inside a sibling folder  filename   os path join fileDir      Folder2 same txt   filename   os path abspath os path realpath filename   print filename readFile filename

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This code will return the absolute path to the main script   import os def whereAmI        return os path dirname os path realpath   import      main       file       This will work even in a module

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An alternative which works for me    this dir   os path dirname   file     filename   os path realpath   0  relative file path  format this dir

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I think to work with all systems  use  quot ntpath quot  instead of  quot os path quot   Today  it works well with Windows  Linux and Mac OSX  import ntpath import os dirname   ntpath dirname   file    filename   os path join dirname   relative path to file you want

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In the file that has the script  you want to do something like this   import os dirname   os path dirname   file    filename   os path join dirname   relative path to file you want     This will give you the absolute path to the file you re looking for   Note that if you re using setuptools  you should probably use its package resources API instead   UPDATE   I m responding to a comment here so I can paste a code sample    -      Am I correct in thinking that   file   is not always available  e g  when you run the file directly rather than importing it     I m assuming you mean the   main   script when you mention running the file directly   If so  that doesn t appear to be the case on my system  python 2 5 1 on OS X 10 5 7     foo py import os print os getcwd   print   file     in the interactive interpreter  gt  gt  gt  import foo  Users jason foo py   and finally  at the shell      python foo py  Users jason foo py   However  I do know that there are some quirks with   file   on C extensions   For example  I can do this on my Mac    gt  gt  gt  import collections  note that collections is a C extension in Python 2 5  gt  gt  gt  collections   file     System Library Frameworks Python framework Versions 2 5 lib python2 5 lib- dynload collections so    However  this raises an exception on my Windows machine

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A simple solution would be import os os chdir os path dirname   file

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What worked for me is using sys path insert  Then I specified the  directory I needed to go  For example I just needed to go up one directory   import sys sys path insert 0

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summary of the most important commands  gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os path join   home user tmp    subfolder     home user tmp subfolder   gt  gt  gt  os path normpath   home user tmp    test        home user   gt  gt  gt  os path relpath   home user tmp     home user    tmp   gt  gt  gt  os path isabs   home user tmp   True  gt  gt  gt  os path isabs   tmp   True  gt  gt  gt  os path isabs  tmp   False  gt  gt  gt  os path isabs       tmp   False  gt  gt  gt  os path realpath   home user tmp    test        follows symbolic links   home user   A detailed description is found in the docs  These are linux paths  Windows should work analogous

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From what suggest others and from pathlib documentation  a simple and clear solution is the following  suppose the file we need to refer to  Test data users csv    This file location  Tests src long module subdir some script py from pathlib import Path    back to Tests  PROJECT ROOT   Path   file    parents 4    then down to Test data users csv CSV USERS PATH   PROJECT ROOT    data     users csv     with CSV USERS PATH open   as users      print users read     Now this looks a bit odd to me  because if you move some script py around  the path to the root of our project may change  we would need to modify parents 4    On the other hand I found a solution that I prefer based on the same idea  Suppose we have the following directory structure  Tests  -- data      -- users csv  -- src     -- long         -- module            -- subdir               -- some script py     -- main py     -- paths py  The paths py file will be responsible for storing the root location of our projet  from pathlib import Path  PROJECT ROOT   Path   file    parents 1   All scripts can now use paths PROJECT ROOT to express absolute paths from the root of the project  For example in src long module subdir some script py we could have  from paths import PROJECT ROOT  CSV USERS PATH   PROJECT ROOT    data     users csv   def hello        with CSV USERS PATH open   as f          print f read     And everything goes as expected    Tests src   python main py   Users cglacet Tests data users csv hello  user    Tests   python src main py   Users cglacet Tests data users csv hello  user  The main py script simply is  from long module subdir import some script  some script hello

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It s 2018 now  and Python have already evolve to the   future   long time ago  So how about using the amazing pathlib coming with Python 3 4 to accomplish the task instead of struggling with os  os path  glob  shutil  etc   So we have 3 paths here  possibly duplicated     mod path  which is the path of the simple helper script src path  which contains a couple of template files waiting to be copied  cwd  current directory  the destination of those template files    and the problem is  we don t have the full path of src path  only know it s relative path to the mod path   Now let s solve this with the the amazing pathlib     Hope you don t be imprisoned by legacy Python code    from pathlib import Path     cwd   current directory is straightforward cwd   Path cwd       mod path   According to the accepted answer and combine with future power   if we are in the  helper script py  mod path   Path   file    parent   OR if we are  import helper script  mod path   Path helper script   file    parent     src path   with the future power  it s just so straightforward relative path 1    same parent with helper script   relative path 2          or any level up   src path 1    mod path   relative path 1  resolve   src path 2    mod path   relative path 2  resolve     In the future  it just that simple   D     Moreover  we can select and check and copy move those template files with pathlib   if src path    cwd        When we have different types of files in the  src path      for template path in src path glob    ini            fname   template path name         target   cwd   fname         if not target exists                  This is the COPY action             with target open mode  wb   as fd                  fd write template path read bytes                  If we want MOVE action  we could use                template path replace target

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Hi first of all you should understand functions os path abspath path  and os path relpath path    In short os path abspath path  makes a relative path to absolute path  And if the path provided is itself a absolute path then the function returns the same path   similarly os path relpath path  makes a absolute path to relative path  And if the path provided is itself a relative path then the function returns the same path   Below example can let you understand the above concept properly   suppose i have a file input file list txt which contains list of input files to be processed by my python script   D  conc input1 dic  D  conc input2 dic  D  Copyioconc input file list txt  If you see above folder structure  input file list txt is present in Copyofconc folder and the files to be processed by the python script are present in conc folder  But the content of the file input file list txt is as shown below      conc input1 dic     conc input2 dic  And my python script is present in D  drive   And the relative path provided in the input file list txt file are relative to the path of input file list txt file   So when python script shall executed the current working directory  use os getcwd   to get the path   As my relative path is relative to input file list txt  that is  D  Copyofconc   i have to change the current working directory to  D  Copyofconc    So i have to use os chdir  D  Copyofconc    so the current working directory shall be  D  Copyofconc    Now to get the files input1 dic and input2 dic  i will read the lines     conc input1 dic  then shall use the command   input1 path  os path abspath     conc input1 dic    to change relative path to absolute path  Here as current working directory is  D  Copyofconc   the file    conc input1 dic  shall be accessed relative to  D  Copyofconc    so input1 path shall be  D  conc input1 dic

[python] Relative paths in Python

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