Find current directory and file's directory [d

Question

This question already has an answer here:

• How to properly determine current script directory? 13 answers
• How to know/change current directory in Python shell? 6 answers

In Python, what commands can I use to find:

1. the current directory (where I was in the terminal when I ran the Python script), and
2. where the file I am executing is?

Answer 1

To get the current directory full path:

os.path.realpath('.')

Answer 2

1.To get the current directory full path

    >>import os
    >>print os.getcwd()

o/p:"C :\Users\admin\myfolder"

1.To get the current directory folder name alone

    >>import os
    >>str1=os.getcwd()
    >>str2=str1.split('\\')
    >>n=len(str2)
    >>print str2[n-1]

o/p:"myfolder"

Answer 3

If you are trying to find the current directory of the file you are currently in:

OS agnostic way:

dirname, filename = os.path.split(os.path.abspath(__file__))

Answer 4

To get the full path to the directory a Python file is contained in, write this in that file:

import os 
dir_path = os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__))

(Note that the incantation above won't work if you've already used os.chdir() to change your current working directory, since the value of the __file__ constant is relative to the current working directory and is not changed by an os.chdir() call.)

---

To get the current working directory use

import os
cwd = os.getcwd()

---

Documentation references for the modules, constants and functions used above:

• The os and os.path modules.
• The __file__ constant
• os.path.realpath(path) (returns "the canonical path of the specified filename, eliminating any symbolic links encountered in the path")
• os.path.dirname(path) (returns "the directory name of pathname path")
• os.getcwd() (returns "a string representing the current working directory")
• os.chdir(path) ("change the current working directory to path")

Answer 5

Current Working Directory: os.getcwd()

And the __file__ attribute can help you find out where the file you are executing is located. This SO post explains everything: How do I get the path of the current executed file in Python?

Answer 6

pathlib module, introduced in Python 3.4 (PEP 428 — The pathlib module — object-oriented filesystem paths), makes path-related experience much much better.

$ pwd
/home/skovorodkin/stack
$ tree
.
└── scripts
    ├── 1.py
    └── 2.py

In order to get current working directory use Path.cwd():

from pathlib import Path

print(Path.cwd())  # /home/skovorodkin/stack

To get an absolute path to your script file, use Path.resolve() method:

print(Path(__file__).resolve())  # /home/skovorodkin/stack/scripts/1.py

And to get path of a directory where your script is located, access .parent (it is recommended to call .resolve() before .parent):

print(Path(__file__).resolve().parent)  # /home/skovorodkin/stack/scripts

Remember that __file__ is not reliable in some situations: How do I get the path of the current executed file in Python?.

---

Please note, that Path.cwd(), Path.resolve() and other Path methods return path objects (PosixPath in my case), not strings. In Python 3.4 and 3.5 that caused some pain, because open built-in function could only work with string or bytes objects, and did not support Path objects, so you had to convert Path objects to strings or use Path.open() method, but the latter option required you to change old code:

$ cat scripts/2.py
from pathlib import Path

p = Path(__file__).resolve()

with p.open() as f: pass
with open(str(p)) as f: pass
with open(p) as f: pass

print('OK')

$ python3.5 scripts/2.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "scripts/2.py", line 11, in <module>
    with open(p) as f:
TypeError: invalid file: PosixPath('/home/skovorodkin/stack/scripts/2.py')

As you can see open(p) does not work with Python 3.5.

PEP 519 — Adding a file system path protocol, implemented in Python 3.6, adds support of PathLike objects to open function, so now you can pass Path objects to open function directly:

$ python3.6 scripts/2.py
OK