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

Answer 2

As mentioned in the accepted answer

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

I just want to add that

the latter string can't begin with the backslash , infact no string should include a backslash

It should be something like

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

The accepted answer can be misleading in some cases , please refer to this link for details

Answer 3

I'm not sure if this applies to some of the older versions, but I believe Python 3.3 has native relative path support.

For example the following code should create a text file in the same folder as the python script:

open("text_file_name.txt", "w+t")

(note that there shouldn't be a forward or backslash at the beginning if it's a relative path)