Cross-platform way of getting temp directory in Python

Question

Is there a cross-platform way of getting the path to the temp directory in Python 2 6     For example  under Linux that would be  tmp  while under XP C  Documents and settings  user  Application settings Temp

User · Answer

I use   from pathlib import Path import platform import tempfile  tempdir   Path   tmp  if platform system       Darwin  else tempfile gettempdir      This is because on MacOS  i e  Darwin  tempfile gettempdir   and os getenv  TMPDIR   return a value such as   var folders nj 269977hs0 96bttwj2gs jhhp48z54 T   it is one that I do not always want

User · Answer

That would be the tempfile module   It has functions to get the temporary directory  and also has some shortcuts to create temporary files and directories in it  either named or unnamed   Example   import tempfile  print tempfile gettempdir     prints the current temporary directory  f   tempfile TemporaryFile   f write  something on temporaryfile   f seek 0    return to beginning of file print f read     reads data back from the file f close     temporary file is automatically deleted here   For completeness  here s how it searches for the temporary directory  according to the documentation    The directory named by the TMPDIR environment variable  The directory named by the TEMP environment variable  The directory named by the TMP environment variable  A platform-specific location    On RiscOS  the directory named by the Wimp ScrapDir environment variable  On Windows  the directories C  TEMP  C  TMP   TEMP  and  TMP  in that order  On all other platforms  the directories  tmp   var tmp  and  usr tmp  in that order   As a last resort  the current working directory

User · Answer

The simplest way  based on  nosklo s comment and answer   import tempfile tmp   tempfile mkdtemp     But if you want to manually control the creation of the directories   import os from tempfile import gettempdir tmp   os path join gettempdir          format hash os times      os makedirs tmp    That way you can easily clean up after yourself when you are done  for privacy  resources  security  whatever  with   from shutil import rmtree rmtree tmp  ignore errors True    This is similar to what applications like Google Chrome and Linux systemd do  They just use a shorter hex hash and an app-specific prefix to  advertise  their presence

User · Answer

This should do what you want   print tempfile gettempdir     For me on my Windows box  I get   c  temp   and on my Linux box I get    tmp

[python] Cross-platform way of getting temp directory in Python

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