Relative paths in Python

Question

I\'m building a simple helper script for work that will copy a couple of template files in our code base to the current directory. I don\'t, however, have the absolute path

Answer 1

Instead of using

import os
dirname = os.path.dirname(__file__)
filename = os.path.join(dirname, 'relative/path/to/file/you/want')

as in the accepted answer, it would be more robust to use:

import inspect
import os
dirname = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(inspect.stack()[0][1]))
filename = os.path.join(dirname, 'relative/path/to/file/you/want')

because using __file__ will return the file from which the module was loaded, if it was loaded from a file, so if the file with the script is called from elsewhere, the directory returned will not be correct.

These answers give more detail: https://stackoverflow.com/a/31867043/5542253 and https://stackoverflow.com/a/50502/5542253