Search for a command to run...
Learn how to get current directory (or path) in Python using pathlib and os modules
AI Software Engineer based in London, UK with 6+ years of professional experience developing and releasing software in different programming languages - Hobbyist Technical Writer - Interested in Software Testing, Best Practices, Scalability, Machine Learning/AI, and Python.
Easy peasy! Great for beginners like me.
Check if two lists are equal, which elements match, get the difference between two lists, compare lists of dictionaries, list of strings and more!
A guide on how to check if two strings are equal, or similar. Learn how to find the difference between two strings. Make complex comparisons and more!
Learn how to fix this new Pylint rule that raises: 'formatting a regular string which could be a f-string (consider-using-f-string)' error
A mega tutorial with dozens of examples on how to use the pathlib module in Python 3
Learn how to ignore autouse fixtures for one test or more tests
Python provides two different ways to get the current working directory. The first method uses the os module and the second uses the newer pathlib.
os Module to Get the Current DirectoryFirst thing you need to do is to import the module.
>>> import os
Then, you just need call the getcwd function.
>>> import os
...
>>> os.getcwd()
'/home/miguel'
And that is it! As you can see, the function returns a string. This is not very flexible, what if you want to list all the files in that directory? You will have to call it on os functions again.
The os module is pretty ancient and I wouldn’t recommend using it nowadays. In the following section, I’m going to show you the modern way of getting the current working directory in Python.
pathlib ModuleThe pathlib module was proposed in 2012 and added to Python in the 3.4 version. The idea was to provide an object-oriented API for filesystem paths. This module provides classes that represent the filesystem paths with semantics appropriate for different operating systems. Also, Path objects are immutable and hashable, which helps prevent programming errors caused by mutability.
To get the current working directory using pathlib you can use the classmethod cwd from the Path class. But first, you need to import it.
from pathlib import Path
Them, you can call the method.
>>> from pathlib import Path
...
>>> Path.cwd()
PosixPath('/home/miguel')
As you can see, the output is different than the os.getcwd(). As I mentioned earlier, all paths follow the semantics of the underlying filesystem. In my case, I'm using Linux, so the output is a PosixPath. On Windows, cwd returns a WindowsPath.
Being an object allows many cool functionalities such as iterating over all files just by calling a method. However, If you still want to get the string representation, you can call str on the Path.cwd().
>>> str(Path.cwd())
'/home/miguel'
Path.cwd Under the HoodHow does Path know the current directory? The answer is: it calls the os and returns an instance of Path. The following snippet shows the actual implementation.
@classmethod
def cwd(cls):
"""Return a new path pointing to the current working directory
(as returned by os.getcwd()).
"""
return cls(os.getcwd())
Wait! On Linux it returns a
PosixPathbut the class method belongs toPath. How does it know?
Great question! Path does some magic behind the scenes before creating the object. It implements the __new__ magic method and calls os to determine the underlying operating system. Check the implementation.
def __new__(cls, *args, **kwargs):
if cls is Path:
cls = WindowsPath if os.name == 'nt' else PosixPath
self = cls._from_parts(args, init=False)
if not self._flavour.is_supported:
raise NotImplementedError("cannot instantiate %r on your system"
% (cls.__name__,))
self._init()
return self
That's it for today, folks! I hope you enjoyed this brief article.
Other posts you may like:
See you next time!
This post was originally published at https://miguendes.me