10.1. os.path — Common pathname manipulations
This module implements some useful functions on pathnames. To read or
write files see open(), and for accessing the filesystem see the
os module. The path parameters can be passed as either strings,
or bytes. Applications are encouraged to represent file names as
(Unicode) character strings. Unfortunately, some file names may not be
representable as strings on Unix, so applications that need to support
arbitrary file names on Unix should use bytes objects to represent
path names. Vice versa, using bytes objects cannot represent all file
names on Windows (in the standard mbcs encoding), hence Windows
applications should use string objects to access all files.
Note
All of these functions accept either only bytes or only string objects as
their parameters. The result is an object of the same type, if a path or
file name is returned.
Note
Since different operating systems have different path name conventions, there
are several versions of this module in the standard library. The
os.path module is always the path module suitable for the operating
system Python is running on, and therefore usable for local paths. However,
you can also import and use the individual modules if you want to manipulate
a path that is always in one of the different formats. They all have the
same interface:
- posixpath for UNIX-style paths
- ntpath for Windows paths
- macpath for old-style MacOS paths
- os2emxpath for OS/2 EMX paths
-
os.path.abspath(path)
- Return a normalized absolutized version of the pathname path. On most
platforms, this is equivalent to normpath(join(os.getcwd(), path)).
-
os.path.basename(path)
- Return the base name of pathname path. This is the second half of the pair
returned by split(path). Note that the result of this function is different
from the Unix basename program; where basename for
'/foo/bar/' returns 'bar', the basename() function returns an
empty string ('').
-
os.path.commonprefix(list)
- Return the longest path prefix (taken character-by-character) that is a prefix
of all paths in list. If list is empty, return the empty string ('').
Note that this may return invalid paths because it works a character at a time.
-
os.path.dirname(path)
- Return the directory name of pathname path. This is the first half of the
pair returned by split(path).
-
os.path.exists(path)
- Return True if path refers to an existing path. Returns False for
broken symbolic links. On some platforms, this function may return False if
permission is not granted to execute os.stat() on the requested file, even
if the path physically exists.
-
os.path.lexists(path)
- Return True if path refers to an existing path. Returns True for
broken symbolic links. Equivalent to exists() on platforms lacking
os.lstat().
-
os.path.expanduser(path)
On Unix and Windows, return the argument with an initial component of ~ or
~user replaced by that user‘s home directory.
On Unix, an initial ~ is replaced by the environment variable HOME
if it is set; otherwise the current user’s home directory is looked up in the
password directory through the built-in module pwd. An initial ~user
is looked up directly in the password directory.
On Windows, HOME and USERPROFILE will be used if set,
otherwise a combination of HOMEPATH and HOMEDRIVE will be
used. An initial ~user is handled by stripping the last directory component
from the created user path derived above.
If the expansion fails or if the path does not begin with a tilde, the path is
returned unchanged.
-
os.path.expandvars(path)
Return the argument with environment variables expanded. Substrings of the form
$name or ${name} are replaced by the value of environment variable
name. Malformed variable names and references to non-existing variables are
left unchanged.
On Windows, %name% expansions are supported in addition to $name and
${name}.
-
os.path.getatime(path)
Return the time of last access of path. The return value is a number giving
the number of seconds since the epoch (see the time module). Raise
os.error if the file does not exist or is inaccessible.
If os.stat_float_times() returns True, the result is a floating point
number.
-
os.path.getmtime(path)
Return the time of last modification of path. The return value is a number
giving the number of seconds since the epoch (see the time module).
Raise os.error if the file does not exist or is inaccessible.
If os.stat_float_times() returns True, the result is a floating point
number.
-
os.path.getctime(path)
- Return the system’s ctime which, on some systems (like Unix) is the time of the
last change, and, on others (like Windows), is the creation time for path.
The return value is a number giving the number of seconds since the epoch (see
the time module). Raise os.error if the file does not exist or
is inaccessible.
-
os.path.getsize(path)
- Return the size, in bytes, of path. Raise os.error if the file does
not exist or is inaccessible.
-
os.path.isabs(path)
- Return True if path is an absolute pathname. On Unix, that means it
begins with a slash, on Windows that it begins with a (back)slash after chopping
off a potential drive letter.
-
os.path.isfile(path)
- Return True if path is an existing regular file. This follows symbolic
links, so both islink() and isfile() can be true for the same path.
-
os.path.isdir(path)
- Return True if path is an existing directory. This follows symbolic
links, so both islink() and isdir() can be true for the same path.
-
os.path.islink(path)
- Return True if path refers to a directory entry that is a symbolic link.
Always False if symbolic links are not supported.
-
os.path.ismount(path)
- Return True if pathname path is a mount point: a point in a file
system where a different file system has been mounted. The function checks
whether path‘s parent, path/.., is on a different device than path,
or whether path/.. and path point to the same i-node on the same
device — this should detect mount points for all Unix and POSIX variants.
-
os.path.join(path1[, path2[, ...]])
- Join one or more path components intelligently. If any component is an absolute
path, all previous components (on Windows, including the previous drive letter,
if there was one) are thrown away, and joining continues. The return value is
the concatenation of path1, and optionally path2, etc., with exactly one
directory separator (os.sep) inserted between components, unless path2 is
empty. Note that on Windows, since there is a current directory for each drive,
os.path.join("c:", "foo") represents a path relative to the current
directory on drive C: (c:foo), not c:\foo.
-
os.path.normcase(path)
- Normalize the case of a pathname. On Unix and Mac OS X, this returns the
path unchanged; on case-insensitive filesystems, it converts the path to
lowercase. On Windows, it also converts forward slashes to backward slashes.
-
os.path.normpath(path)
- Normalize a pathname. This collapses redundant separators and up-level
references so that A//B, A/./B and A/foo/../B all become A/B.
It does not normalize the case (use normcase() for that). On Windows, it
converts forward slashes to backward slashes. It should be understood that this
may change the meaning of the path if it contains symbolic links!
-
os.path.realpath(path)
- Return the canonical path of the specified filename, eliminating any symbolic
links encountered in the path (if they are supported by the operating system).
-
os.path.relpath(path[, start])
Return a relative filepath to path either from the current directory or from
an optional start point.
start defaults to os.curdir.
Availability: Windows, Unix.
-
os.path.samefile(path1, path2)
Return True if both pathname arguments refer to the same file or directory
(as indicated by device number and i-node number). Raise an exception if a
os.stat() call on either pathname fails.
Availability: Unix.
-
os.path.sameopenfile(fp1, fp2)
Return True if the file descriptors fp1 and fp2 refer to the same file.
Availability: Unix.
-
os.path.samestat(stat1, stat2)
Return True if the stat tuples stat1 and stat2 refer to the same file.
These structures may have been returned by fstat(), lstat(), or
stat(). This function implements the underlying comparison used by
samefile() and sameopenfile().
Availability: Unix.
-
os.path.split(path)
- Split the pathname path into a pair, (head, tail) where tail is the last
pathname component and head is everything leading up to that. The tail part
will never contain a slash; if path ends in a slash, tail will be empty. If
there is no slash in path, head will be empty. If path is empty, both
head and tail are empty. Trailing slashes are stripped from head unless
it is the root (one or more slashes only). In nearly all cases, join(head,
tail) equals path (the only exception being when there were multiple slashes
separating head from tail).
-
os.path.splitdrive(path)
Split the pathname path into a pair (drive, tail) where drive is either
a mount point or the empty string. On systems which do not use drive
specifications, drive will always be the empty string. In all cases, drive
+ tail will be the same as path.
On Windows, splits a pathname into drive/UNC sharepoint and relative path.
If the path contains a drive letter, drive will contain everything
up to and including the colon.
e.g. splitdrive("c:/dir") returns ("c:", "/dir")
If the path contains a UNC path, drive will contain the host name
and share, up to but not including the fourth separator.
e.g. splitdrive("//host/computer/dir") returns ("//host/computer", "/dir")
-
os.path.splitext(path)
- Split the pathname path into a pair (root, ext) such that root + ext ==
path, and ext is empty or begins with a period and contains at most one
period. Leading periods on the basename are ignored; splitext('.cshrc')
returns ('.cshrc', '').
-
os.path.splitunc(path)
Deprecated since version 3.1: Use splitdrive instead.
Split the pathname path into a pair (unc, rest) so that unc is the UNC
mount point (such as r'\\host\mount'), if present, and rest the rest of
the path (such as r'\path\file.ext'). For paths containing drive letters,
unc will always be the empty string.
Availability: Windows.
-
os.path.supports_unicode_filenames
- True if arbitrary Unicode strings can be used as file names (within limitations
imposed by the file system).