CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonbackslashslash
Wallflower
Wallflower

Reputation: 650

'/' or '\' for paths?

I am having this problem when sharing files with my friends...

I have windows, some use mac and others Linux. When I share python files that contain commands of creating directories, like for instance:

Path_Results = os.path.dirname(Path_Definition)+'\Results'

the directory is not created because in Windows \ is used, whereas in mac and linux / are used. Any ideas how can I create a more general script ?

Thanks in advance

Upvotes: 2

Views: 908

Answers (3)

pepoluan
pepoluan

Reputation: 6780

Use pathlib.Path. Then you'll stop concerning yourself with / or \

On Windows:

>>> from pathlib import Path
>>> updir = Path("..")
>>> resdir = updir / "Result"
>>> resdir
WindowsPath('../Result')
>>> str(resdir)
'..\\Result'

On Linux, Mac, BSD, and other *nix:

>>> from pathlib import Path
>>> updir = Path("..")
>>> resdir = updir / "Result"
>>> resdir
PosixPath('../Result')
>>> str(resdir)
'../Result'

Nearly all stdlib modules and functions accept Path as is, no need to str() it. Example:

from pathlib import Path
resdir = Path("../Result")
filepath = resdir / "somefilename.txt"
assert isinstance(filepath, Path)
with open(filepath, "rt") as fin:
    for ln in fin:
        # do things

Provided there's a file ..\Result\somefilename.txt (in Windows) or ../Result/somefilename.txt (in Linux/Mac/BSD), the code will work exactly the same.

Edit: For your particular code:

from pathlib import Path

...

# Assuming `Path_Definition` is not a Path object
Path_Results = Path(Path_Definition) / 'Results'

Upvotes: 4

Shashi
Shashi

Reputation: 100

Its not good idea to use '/' or '' directly. path separator mentioned by @mrks is what we need to use.

Upvotes: 0

mrks
mrks

Reputation: 8333

os.sep exists for this very purpose. You can also use os.path.join.

Upvotes: 3

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