python get directory two levels up

Question

Ok   I dont know where module x is  but I know that I need to get the path to the directory two levels up   So  is there a more elegant way to do   import os two up   os path dirname os path dirname   file       Solutions for both Python 2 and 3 are welcome

User · Accepted Answer

You can use pathlib  Unfortunately this is only available in the stdlib for Python 3 4  If you have an older version you ll have to install a copy from PyPI here  This should be easy to do using pip   from pathlib import Path  p   Path   file    parents 1   print p     absolute path to two levels up   This uses the parents sequence which provides access to the parent directories and chooses the 2nd one up   Note that p in this case will be some form of Path object  with their own methods  If you need the paths as string then you can call str on them

User · Answer

More cross-platform implementation will be   import pathlib two up    pathlib Path   file                   resolve     Using parent is not supported on Windows  Also need to add  resolve    to       Make the path absolute  resolving all symlinks on the way and also normalizing it  for example turning slashes into backslashes under        Windows

User · Answer

You can use this as a generic solution   import os  def getParentDir path  level 1     return os path normpath  os path join path             level

User · Answer

The best solution  for python    3 4  when executing from any directory is   from pathlib import Path two up   Path   file    resolve   parents 1

User · Answer

Assuming you want to access folder named xzy two folders up your python file  This works for me and platform independent         xyz

User · Answer

Personally  I find that using the os module is the easiest method as outlined below  If you are only going up one level  replace           with              import os     os chdir           --Check      os getcwd

User · Answer

pathlib Path             resolve

User · Answer

I have found that the following works well in 2 7 x  import os two up   os path normpath os path join   file

User · Answer

For getting the directory 2 levels up    import os path as path  two up   path abspath path join os getcwd

User · Answer

Very easy   Here is what you want   import os path as path  two up    path abspath path join   file

User · Answer

I don t yet see a viable answer for 2 7 which doesn t require installing additional dependencies and also starts from the file s directory  It s not nice as a single-line solution  but there s nothing wrong with using the standard utilities   import os  grandparent dir   os path abspath     Convert into absolute path string     os path join     Current file s grandparent directory         os path join     Current file s parent directory             os path dirname     Current file s directory                 os path abspath   file       Current file path                            os pardir                    os pardir          print grandparent dir   And to prove it works  here I start out in   Documents notes just so that I show the current directory doesn t influence outcome  I put the file grandpa py with that script in a folder called  scripts   It crawls up to the Documents dir and then to the user dir on a Mac    testing AlanSE-OSX notes AlanSE  echo   Documents scripts grandpa py   Users alancoding Documents scripts grandpa py  testing AlanSE-OSX notes AlanSE  python2 7   Documents scripts grandpa py   Users alancoding   This is the obvious extrapolation of the answer for the parent dir  Better to use a general solution than a less-good solution in fewer lines

User · Answer

I was going to add this just to be silly  but also because it shows newcomers the potential usefulness of aliasing functions and or imports   Having written it  I think this code is more readable  i e  lower time to grasp intention  than the other answers to date  and readability is  usually  king   from os path import dirname as up  two up   up up   file       Note  you only want to do this kind of thing if your module is very small  or contextually cohesive

[python] python: get directory two levels up

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