Given a path such as "mydir/myfile.txt"
, how do I find the file's absolute path relative to the current working directory in Python? E.g. on Windows, I might end up with:
"C:/example/cwd/mydir/myfile.txt"
This question is related to
python
path
relative-path
absolute-path
if you are on a mac
import os
upload_folder = os.path.abspath("static/img/users")
this will give you a full path:
print(upload_folder)
will show the following path:
>>>/Users/myUsername/PycharmProjects/OBS/static/img/user
Update for Python 3.4+ pathlib
that actually answers the question:
from pathlib import Path
relative = Path("mydir/myfile.txt")
absolute = relative.absolute() # absolute is a Path object
If you only need a temporary string, keep in mind that you can use Path
objects with all the relevant functions in os.path
, including of course abspath
:
from os.path import abspath
absolute = abspath(relative) # absolute is a str object
This always gets the right filename of the current script, even when it is called from within another script. It is especially useful when using subprocess
.
import sys,os
filename = sys.argv[0]
from there, you can get the script's full path with:
>>> os.path.abspath(filename)
'/foo/bar/script.py'
It also makes easier to navigate folders by just appending /..
as many times as you want to go 'up' in the directories' hierarchy.
To get the cwd:
>>> os.path.abspath(filename+"/..")
'/foo/bar'
For the parent path:
>>> os.path.abspath(filename+"/../..")
'/foo'
By combining "/.."
with other filenames, you can access any file in the system.
Today you can also use the unipath
package which was based on path.py
: http://sluggo.scrapping.cc/python/unipath/
>>> from unipath import Path
>>> absolute_path = Path('mydir/myfile.txt').absolute()
Path('C:\\example\\cwd\\mydir\\myfile.txt')
>>> str(absolute_path)
C:\\example\\cwd\\mydir\\myfile.txt
>>>
I would recommend using this package as it offers a clean interface to common os.path utilities.
You could use the new Python 3.4 library pathlib
. (You can also get it for Python 2.6 or 2.7 using pip install pathlib
.) The authors wrote: "The aim of this library is to provide a simple hierarchy of classes to handle filesystem paths and the common operations users do over them."
To get an absolute path in Windows:
>>> from pathlib import Path
>>> p = Path("pythonw.exe").resolve()
>>> p
WindowsPath('C:/Python27/pythonw.exe')
>>> str(p)
'C:\\Python27\\pythonw.exe'
Or on UNIX:
>>> from pathlib import Path
>>> p = Path("python3.4").resolve()
>>> p
PosixPath('/opt/python3/bin/python3.4')
>>> str(p)
'/opt/python3/bin/python3.4'
Docs are here: https://docs.python.org/3/library/pathlib.html
Install a third-party path module (found on PyPI
), it wraps all the os.path
functions and other related functions into methods on an object that can be used wherever strings are used:
>>> from path import path
>>> path('mydir/myfile.txt').abspath()
'C:\\example\\cwd\\mydir\\myfile.txt'
In case someone is using python and linux and looking for full path to file:
>>> path=os.popen("readlink -f file").read()
>>> print path
abs/path/to/file
import os
os.path.abspath(os.path.expanduser(os.path.expandvars(PathNameString)))
Note that expanduser
is necessary (on Unix) in case the given expression for the file (or directory) name and location may contain a leading ~/
(the tilde refers to the user's home directory), and expandvars
takes care of any other environment variables (like $HOME
).
Source: Stackoverflow.com