How to retrieve a module s path

Question

I want to detect whether module has changed  Now  using inotify is simple  you just need to know the directory you want to get notifications from   How do I retrieve a module s path in python

User · Answer

If the only caveat of using   file   is when current  relative directory is blank  ie  when running as a script from the same directory where the script is   then a trivial solution is   import os path mydir   os path dirname   file    or     full    os path abspath mydir  print   file    mydir  full   And the result     python teste py  teste py    home user work teste   The trick is in or     after the dirname   call  It sets the dir as    which means current directory and is a valid directory for any path-related function   Thus  using abspath   is not truly needed  But if you use it anyway  the trick is not needed  abspath   accepts blank paths and properly interprets it as the current directory

User · Answer

import module print module   path        Packages support one more special attribute    path    This is   initialized to be a list containing the name of the directory holding   the package   s   init   py before the code in that file is executed    This variable can be modified  doing so affects future searches for   modules and subpackages contained in the package       While this feature is not often needed  it can be used to extend the   set of modules found in a package    Source

User · Answer

If you would like to know absolute path from your script you can use Path object   from pathlib import Path  print Path   absolute    print Path   resolve       print Path   cwd      cwd   method     Return a new path object representing the current directory  as returned by os getcwd      resolve   method     Make the path absolute  resolving any symlinks  A new path object is returned

User · Answer

As the other answers have said  the best way to do this is with   file    demonstrated again below   However  there is an important caveat  which is that   file   does NOT exist if you are running the module on its own   i e  as   main      For example  say you have two files  both of which are on your PYTHONPATH      path1 foo py import bar print bar   file      and    path2 bar py import os print os getcwd    print   file      Running foo py will give the output    path1           import bar  causes the line  print os getcwd     to run  path2 bar py   then  print   file     runs  path2 bar py   then the import statement finishes and  print bar   file     runs   HOWEVER if you try to run bar py on its own  you will get    path2                                 print os getcwd     still works fine Traceback  most recent call last      but   file   doesn t exist if bar py is running as main   File   path2 bar py   line 3  in  lt module gt      print   file    NameError  name    file    is not defined    Hope this helps  This caveat cost me a lot of time and confusion while testing the other solutions presented

User · Answer

This was trivial   Each module has a   file   variable that shows its relative path from where you are right now   Therefore  getting a directory for the module to notify it is simple as   os path dirname   file

User · Answer

I will try tackling a few variations on this question as well   finding the path of the called script finding the path of the currently executing script finding the directory of the called script   Some of these questions have been asked on SO  but have been closed as duplicates and redirected here   Caveats of Using   file   For a module that you have imported  import something something   file     will return the absolute path of the module   However  given the folowing script foo py   foo py print    file       file    Calling it with  python foo py  Will return simply  foo py    If you add a shebang     usr bin python   foo py print    file       file    and call it using   foo py  it will return    foo py    Calling it from a different directory   eg put foo py in directory bar   then calling either python bar foo py  or adding a shebang and executing the file directly  bar foo py  will return  bar foo py   the relative path   Finding the directory Now going from there to get the directory  os path dirname   file    can also be tricky   At least on my system  it returns an empty string if you call it from the same directory as the file   ex    foo py import os print    file   is      file   print  os path dirname   file    is    os path dirname   file     will output    file   is  foo py os path dirname   file    is    In other words  it returns an empty string  so this does not seem reliable if you want to use it for the current file  as opposed to the file of an imported module    To get around this  you can wrap it in a call to abspath    foo py import os print  os path abspath   file    is    os path abspath   file    print  os path dirname os path abspath   file     is    os path dirname os path abspath   file      which outputs something like  os path abspath   file    is   home user bar foo py os path dirname os path abspath   file     is   home user bar  Note that abspath   does NOT resolve symlinks   If you want to do this  use realpath   instead   For example  making a symlink file import testing link pointing to file import testing py  with the following content  import os print  abspath   file     os path abspath   file    print  realpath   file     os path realpath   file     executing will print absolute paths something like  abspath   file     home user file test link realpath   file     home user file test py  file import testing link - gt  file import testing py Using inspect  SummerBreeze mentions using the inspect module  This seems to work well  and is quite concise  for imported modules  import os import inspect print  inspect getfile os  is    inspect getfile os   obediently returns the absolute path   For finding the path of the currently executing script  inspect getfile inspect currentframe      thanks   jbochi

User · Answer

import os path   os path abspath   file    dir path   os path dirname path

User · Answer

you can just import your module then hit its name and you ll get its full path   gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os  lt module  os  from  C   Users  Hassan Ashraf  AppData  Local  Programs  Python  Python36-32  lib  os py  gt   gt  gt  gt

User · Answer

This was trivial   Each module has a   file   variable that shows its relative path from where you are right now   Therefore  getting a directory for the module to notify it is simple as   os path dirname   file

User · Answer

There is inspect module in python   Official documentation     The inspect module provides several useful functions to help get   information about live objects such as modules  classes  methods    functions  tracebacks  frame objects  and code objects  For example    it can help you examine the contents of a class  retrieve the source   code of a method  extract and format the argument list for a function    or get all the information you need to display a detailed traceback    Example    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  import inspect  gt  gt  gt  inspect getfile os    usr lib64 python2 7 os pyc   gt  gt  gt  inspect getfile inspect    usr lib64 python2 7 inspect pyc   gt  gt  gt  os path dirname inspect getfile inspect     usr lib64 python2 7

User · Answer

If you want to retrieve the package s root path from any of its modules  the following works  tested on Python 3 6    from   import   path   as ROOT PATH print ROOT PATH    The main   init   py path can also be referenced by using   file   instead   Hope this helps

User · Answer

import a module print a module   file      Will actually give you the path to the  pyc file that was loaded  at least on Mac OS X  So I guess you can do   import os path   os path abspath a module   file      You can also try   path   os path dirname a module   file      To get the module s directory

User · Answer

From within modules of a python package I had to refer to a file that resided in the same directory as package  Ex   some dir    maincli py   top package        init   py     level one a          init   py       my lib a py       level two            init   py         hello world py     level one b          init   py       my lib b py   So in above I had to call maincli py from my lib a py module knowing that top package and maincli py are in the same directory  Here s how I get the path to maincli py   import sys import os import imp   class ConfigurationException Exception       pass     inside of my lib a py def get maincli path        maincli path   os path abspath imp find module  maincli   1         top package     package   split      0        mod   sys modules get top package        modfile   mod   file         pkg in dir   os path dirname os path dirname os path abspath modfile          maincli path   os path join pkg in dir   maincli py        if not os path exists maincli path           err msg    This script expects that  maincli py  be installed to the             same directory    0    format maincli path          raise ConfigurationException err msg       return maincli path   Based on posting by PlasmaBinturong I modified the code

User · Answer

import module print module   path        Packages support one more special attribute    path    This is   initialized to be a list containing the name of the directory holding   the package   s   init   py before the code in that file is executed    This variable can be modified  doing so affects future searches for   modules and subpackages contained in the package       While this feature is not often needed  it can be used to extend the   set of modules found in a package    Source

User · Answer

If you would like to know absolute path from your script you can use Path object   from pathlib import Path  print Path   absolute    print Path   resolve       print Path   cwd      cwd   method     Return a new path object representing the current directory  as returned by os getcwd      resolve   method     Make the path absolute  resolving any symlinks  A new path object is returned

User · Answer

From within modules of a python package I had to refer to a file that resided in the same directory as package  Ex   some dir    maincli py   top package        init   py     level one a          init   py       my lib a py       level two            init   py         hello world py     level one b          init   py       my lib b py   So in above I had to call maincli py from my lib a py module knowing that top package and maincli py are in the same directory  Here s how I get the path to maincli py   import sys import os import imp   class ConfigurationException Exception       pass     inside of my lib a py def get maincli path        maincli path   os path abspath imp find module  maincli   1         top package     package   split      0        mod   sys modules get top package        modfile   mod   file         pkg in dir   os path dirname os path dirname os path abspath modfile          maincli path   os path join pkg in dir   maincli py        if not os path exists maincli path           err msg    This script expects that  maincli py  be installed to the             same directory    0    format maincli path          raise ConfigurationException err msg       return maincli path   Based on posting by PlasmaBinturong I modified the code

User · Answer

Command Line Utility  You can tweak it to a command line utility   python-which  lt package name gt        Create  usr local bin python-which     usr bin env python  import importlib import os import sys  args   sys argv 1   if len args   gt  0      module   importlib import module args 0       print os path dirname module   file      Make it executable   sudo chmod  x  usr local bin python-which

User · Answer

This was trivial   Each module has a   file   variable that shows its relative path from where you are right now   Therefore  getting a directory for the module to notify it is simple as   os path dirname   file

User · Answer

If you want to retrieve the package s root path from any of its modules  the following works  tested on Python 3 6    from   import   path   as ROOT PATH print ROOT PATH    The main   init   py path can also be referenced by using   file   instead   Hope this helps

User · Answer

As the other answers have said  the best way to do this is with   file    demonstrated again below   However  there is an important caveat  which is that   file   does NOT exist if you are running the module on its own   i e  as   main      For example  say you have two files  both of which are on your PYTHONPATH      path1 foo py import bar print bar   file      and    path2 bar py import os print os getcwd    print   file      Running foo py will give the output    path1           import bar  causes the line  print os getcwd     to run  path2 bar py   then  print   file     runs  path2 bar py   then the import statement finishes and  print bar   file     runs   HOWEVER if you try to run bar py on its own  you will get    path2                                 print os getcwd     still works fine Traceback  most recent call last      but   file   doesn t exist if bar py is running as main   File   path2 bar py   line 3  in  lt module gt      print   file    NameError  name    file    is not defined    Hope this helps  This caveat cost me a lot of time and confusion while testing the other solutions presented

User · Answer

When you import a module  yo have access to plenty of information  Check out dir a module   As for the path  there is a dunder for that  a module   path    You can also just print the module itself   gt  gt  gt  import a module  gt  gt  gt  print dir a module       builtins        cached        doc        file        loader        name        package        path        spec      gt  gt  gt  print a module   path               a module    gt  gt  gt  print a module   lt module  a module  from           a module   init   py  gt

User · Answer

When you import a module  yo have access to plenty of information  Check out dir a module   As for the path  there is a dunder for that  a module   path    You can also just print the module itself   gt  gt  gt  import a module  gt  gt  gt  print dir a module       builtins        cached        doc        file        loader        name        package        path        spec      gt  gt  gt  print a module   path               a module    gt  gt  gt  print a module   lt module  a module  from           a module   init   py  gt

User · Answer

This was trivial   Each module has a   file   variable that shows its relative path from where you are right now   Therefore  getting a directory for the module to notify it is simple as   os path dirname   file

User · Answer

I will try tackling a few variations on this question as well   finding the path of the called script finding the path of the currently executing script finding the directory of the called script   Some of these questions have been asked on SO  but have been closed as duplicates and redirected here   Caveats of Using   file   For a module that you have imported  import something something   file     will return the absolute path of the module   However  given the folowing script foo py   foo py print    file       file    Calling it with  python foo py  Will return simply  foo py    If you add a shebang     usr bin python   foo py print    file       file    and call it using   foo py  it will return    foo py    Calling it from a different directory   eg put foo py in directory bar   then calling either python bar foo py  or adding a shebang and executing the file directly  bar foo py  will return  bar foo py   the relative path   Finding the directory Now going from there to get the directory  os path dirname   file    can also be tricky   At least on my system  it returns an empty string if you call it from the same directory as the file   ex    foo py import os print    file   is      file   print  os path dirname   file    is    os path dirname   file     will output    file   is  foo py os path dirname   file    is    In other words  it returns an empty string  so this does not seem reliable if you want to use it for the current file  as opposed to the file of an imported module    To get around this  you can wrap it in a call to abspath    foo py import os print  os path abspath   file    is    os path abspath   file    print  os path dirname os path abspath   file     is    os path dirname os path abspath   file      which outputs something like  os path abspath   file    is   home user bar foo py os path dirname os path abspath   file     is   home user bar  Note that abspath   does NOT resolve symlinks   If you want to do this  use realpath   instead   For example  making a symlink file import testing link pointing to file import testing py  with the following content  import os print  abspath   file     os path abspath   file    print  realpath   file     os path realpath   file     executing will print absolute paths something like  abspath   file     home user file test link realpath   file     home user file test py  file import testing link - gt  file import testing py Using inspect  SummerBreeze mentions using the inspect module  This seems to work well  and is quite concise  for imported modules  import os import inspect print  inspect getfile os  is    inspect getfile os   obediently returns the absolute path   For finding the path of the currently executing script  inspect getfile inspect currentframe      thanks   jbochi

User · Answer

I don t get why no one is talking about this  but to me the simplest solution is using imp find module  modulename    documentation here    import imp imp find module  os     It gives a tuple with the path in second position     lt open file   usr lib python2 7 os py   mode  U  at 0x7f44528d7540 gt     usr lib python2 7 os py      py    U   1     The advantage of this method over the  inspect  one is that you don t need to import the module to make it work  and you can use a string in input  Useful when checking modules called in another script for example   EDIT   In python3  importlib module should do   Doc of importlib util find spec      Return the spec for the specified module       First  sys modules is checked to see if the module was already imported  If so  then sys modules name  spec is returned  If that happens to be   set to None  then ValueError is raised  If the module is not in   sys modules  then sys meta path is searched for a suitable spec with the   value of  path  given to the finders  None is returned if no spec could   be found       If the name is for submodule  contains a dot   the parent module is   automatically imported       The name and package arguments work the same as importlib import module      In other words  relative module names  with leading dots  work

User · Answer

If the only caveat of using   file   is when current  relative directory is blank  ie  when running as a script from the same directory where the script is   then a trivial solution is   import os path mydir   os path dirname   file    or     full    os path abspath mydir  print   file    mydir  full   And the result     python teste py  teste py    home user work teste   The trick is in or     after the dirname   call  It sets the dir as    which means current directory and is a valid directory for any path-related function   Thus  using abspath   is not truly needed  But if you use it anyway  the trick is not needed  abspath   accepts blank paths and properly interprets it as the current directory

User · Answer

import a module print a module   file      Will actually give you the path to the  pyc file that was loaded  at least on Mac OS X  So I guess you can do   import os path   os path abspath a module   file      You can also try   path   os path dirname a module   file      To get the module s directory

User · Answer

Command Line Utility  You can tweak it to a command line utility   python-which  lt package name gt        Create  usr local bin python-which     usr bin env python  import importlib import os import sys  args   sys argv 1   if len args   gt  0      module   importlib import module args 0       print os path dirname module   file      Make it executable   sudo chmod  x  usr local bin python-which

User · Answer

There is inspect module in python   Official documentation     The inspect module provides several useful functions to help get   information about live objects such as modules  classes  methods    functions  tracebacks  frame objects  and code objects  For example    it can help you examine the contents of a class  retrieve the source   code of a method  extract and format the argument list for a function    or get all the information you need to display a detailed traceback    Example    gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  import inspect  gt  gt  gt  inspect getfile os    usr lib64 python2 7 os pyc   gt  gt  gt  inspect getfile inspect    usr lib64 python2 7 inspect pyc   gt  gt  gt  os path dirname inspect getfile inspect     usr lib64 python2 7

User · Answer

If you installed it using pip   pip show  works great   Location      pip show detectron2  Name  detectron2 Version  0 1 Summary  Detectron2 is FAIR next-generation research platform for object detection and segmentation  Home-page  https   github com facebookresearch detectron2 Author  FAIR Author-email  None License  UNKNOWN Location   home ubuntu anaconda3 envs pytorch p36 lib python3 6 site-packages Requires  yacs  tabulate  tqdm  pydot  tensorboard  Pillow  termcolor  future  cloudpickle  matplotlib  fvcore

User · Answer

If you wish to do this dynamically in a  program  try this code  My point is  you may not know the exact name of the module to  hardcode  it  It may be selected from a list or may not be currently running to use   file      I know  it will not work in Python 3   global modpath modname    os   This can be any module name on the fly  Create a file called  modname py  f open  modname py   w   f write  import   modname   n   f write  modpath     modname   n   f close    Call the file with execfile   execfile  modname py   print modpath  lt module  os  from  C  Python27 lib os pyc  gt    I tried to get rid of the  global  issue but found cases where it did not work I think  execfile    can be emulated in Python 3 Since this is in a program  it can easily be put in a method or module for reuse

User · Answer

import os path   os path abspath   file    dir path   os path dirname path

User · Answer

import a module print a module   file      Will actually give you the path to the  pyc file that was loaded  at least on Mac OS X  So I guess you can do   import os path   os path abspath a module   file      You can also try   path   os path dirname a module   file      To get the module s directory

User · Answer

If you wish to do this dynamically in a  program  try this code  My point is  you may not know the exact name of the module to  hardcode  it  It may be selected from a list or may not be currently running to use   file      I know  it will not work in Python 3   global modpath modname    os   This can be any module name on the fly  Create a file called  modname py  f open  modname py   w   f write  import   modname   n   f write  modpath     modname   n   f close    Call the file with execfile   execfile  modname py   print modpath  lt module  os  from  C  Python27 lib os pyc  gt    I tried to get rid of the  global  issue but found cases where it did not work I think  execfile    can be emulated in Python 3 Since this is in a program  it can easily be put in a method or module for reuse

User · Answer

Here is a quick bash script in case it s useful to anyone   I just want to be able to set an environment variable so that I can pushd to the code      bin bash module   1   I need a module name    python  lt  lt  EOI import  module import os print os path dirname  module   file    EOI   Shell example    root sri-4625-0004     export LXML   get python path sh lxml   root sri-4625-0004     echo  LXML  usr lib64 python2 7 site-packages lxml  root sri-4625-0004

User · Answer

So I spent a fair amount of time trying to do this with py2exe The problem was to get the base folder of the script whether it was being run as a python script or as a py2exe executable  Also to have it work whether it was being run from the current folder  another folder or  this was the hardest  from the system s path   Eventually I used this approach  using sys frozen as an indicator of running in py2exe   import os sys if hasattr sys  frozen      only when running in py2exe this exists     base   sys prefix else    otherwise this is a regular python script     base   os path dirname os path realpath   file

User · Answer

I don t get why no one is talking about this  but to me the simplest solution is using imp find module  modulename    documentation here    import imp imp find module  os     It gives a tuple with the path in second position     lt open file   usr lib python2 7 os py   mode  U  at 0x7f44528d7540 gt     usr lib python2 7 os py      py    U   1     The advantage of this method over the  inspect  one is that you don t need to import the module to make it work  and you can use a string in input  Useful when checking modules called in another script for example   EDIT   In python3  importlib module should do   Doc of importlib util find spec      Return the spec for the specified module       First  sys modules is checked to see if the module was already imported  If so  then sys modules name  spec is returned  If that happens to be   set to None  then ValueError is raised  If the module is not in   sys modules  then sys meta path is searched for a suitable spec with the   value of  path  given to the finders  None is returned if no spec could   be found       If the name is for submodule  contains a dot   the parent module is   automatically imported       The name and package arguments work the same as importlib import module      In other words  relative module names  with leading dots  work

User · Answer

So I spent a fair amount of time trying to do this with py2exe The problem was to get the base folder of the script whether it was being run as a python script or as a py2exe executable  Also to have it work whether it was being run from the current folder  another folder or  this was the hardest  from the system s path   Eventually I used this approach  using sys frozen as an indicator of running in py2exe   import os sys if hasattr sys  frozen      only when running in py2exe this exists     base   sys prefix else    otherwise this is a regular python script     base   os path dirname os path realpath   file

User · Answer

import a module print a module   file      Will actually give you the path to the  pyc file that was loaded  at least on Mac OS X  So I guess you can do   import os path   os path abspath a module   file      You can also try   path   os path dirname a module   file      To get the module s directory

User · Answer

I d like to contribute with one common scenario  in Python 3  and explore a few approaches to it   The built-in function open   accepts either relative or absolute path as its first argument  The relative path is treated as relative to the current working directory though so it is recommended to pass the absolute path to the file   Simply said  if you run a script file with the following code  it is not guaranteed that the example txt file will be created in the same directory where the script file is located   with open  example txt    w        pass   To fix this code we need to get the path to the script and make it absolute  To ensure the path to be absolute we simply use the os path realpath   function  To get the path to the script there are several common functions that return various path results    os getcwd   os path realpath  example txt   sys argv 0    file     Both functions os getcwd   and os path realpath   return path results based on the current working directory  Generally not what we want  The first element of the sys argv list is the path of the root script  the script you run  regardless of whether you call the list in the root script itself or in any of its modules  It might come handy in some situations  The   file   variable contains path of the module from which it has been called     The following code correctly creates a file example txt in the same directory where the script is located   filedir   os path dirname os path realpath   file     filepath   os path join filedir   example txt    with open filepath   w        pass

User · Answer

If you installed it using pip   pip show  works great   Location      pip show detectron2  Name  detectron2 Version  0 1 Summary  Detectron2 is FAIR next-generation research platform for object detection and segmentation  Home-page  https   github com facebookresearch detectron2 Author  FAIR Author-email  None License  UNKNOWN Location   home ubuntu anaconda3 envs pytorch p36 lib python3 6 site-packages Requires  yacs  tabulate  tqdm  pydot  tensorboard  Pillow  termcolor  future  cloudpickle  matplotlib  fvcore

User · Answer

I d like to contribute with one common scenario  in Python 3  and explore a few approaches to it   The built-in function open   accepts either relative or absolute path as its first argument  The relative path is treated as relative to the current working directory though so it is recommended to pass the absolute path to the file   Simply said  if you run a script file with the following code  it is not guaranteed that the example txt file will be created in the same directory where the script file is located   with open  example txt    w        pass   To fix this code we need to get the path to the script and make it absolute  To ensure the path to be absolute we simply use the os path realpath   function  To get the path to the script there are several common functions that return various path results    os getcwd   os path realpath  example txt   sys argv 0    file     Both functions os getcwd   and os path realpath   return path results based on the current working directory  Generally not what we want  The first element of the sys argv list is the path of the root script  the script you run  regardless of whether you call the list in the root script itself or in any of its modules  It might come handy in some situations  The   file   variable contains path of the module from which it has been called     The following code correctly creates a file example txt in the same directory where the script is located   filedir   os path dirname os path realpath   file     filepath   os path join filedir   example txt    with open filepath   w        pass

User · Answer

you can just import your module then hit its name and you ll get its full path   gt  gt  gt  import os  gt  gt  gt  os  lt module  os  from  C   Users  Hassan Ashraf  AppData  Local  Programs  Python  Python36-32  lib  os py  gt   gt  gt  gt

User · Answer

Here is a quick bash script in case it s useful to anyone   I just want to be able to set an environment variable so that I can pushd to the code      bin bash module   1   I need a module name    python  lt  lt  EOI import  module import os print os path dirname  module   file    EOI   Shell example    root sri-4625-0004     export LXML   get python path sh lxml   root sri-4625-0004     echo  LXML  usr lib64 python2 7 site-packages lxml  root sri-4625-0004

[python] How to retrieve a module's path?

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