Introduction
This tutorial will guide you on how to use the Pathlib module for working with filesystem paths, the benefits, and understand the problem it solves since the Python standard library already contains os.path.
How is it Better than os.path
os.path
was the only way to work with filesystem paths, but it had some limitations. To perform certain tasks, you
have to import from other standard library modules. For instance, suppose you want to list the files ending with .txt
in a directory, os.path
is not enough.
Using os.path
, you will do this:
import os
import glob
list(glob(os.path.join('posts', '*.md')))
Using pathlib
, you will do this:
from pathlib import Path
list(Path('posts').glob('*.md'))
From the first example that makes use of os.path
, there was the need to import glob
. But with pathlib
, most of the functionality found in other modules are now in one place.
Getting Started
from pathlib import Path
According to the standard library, Path instantiates a concrete path for the platform your code is running on.
This basically means that Path class figures out the necessary path separator that is required for the platform
your code is running on.
NB: Windows uses a backslash as a path separator while unix based systems use the forward slash.
There are other classes that can be used, such as the WindowsPath
and PosixPath
Using Path classmethods
Path.home()
PosixPath('/home/ashiri')
Path.cwd()
PosixPath('/home/ashiri/iyanuashiri/content/posts')
The Path class provides us with two classmethods. The home
classmethod returns a home directory path object while the
cwd
classmethod returns the current working directory path object
Creating Path object
p = Path.home() / 'iyanu'
PosixPath('/home/ashiri/iyanu')
This code snippet creates a path object that can be used in your Python code, but the directory already exist
for the code to do something. In the next two examples, we will show how to create a new directory and a new file from
your Python code.
Create a New Directory
p = Path.home() / 'folder_name'
p.mkdir()
In the code snippet above, we create a path object called p
and use the instance method mkdir
.
Create a New File
p = Path.home() / 'folder_name'
p.mkdir()
r = p / 'file_name.txt'
r.touch()
In this code snippet, we start by creating a path object called p
, then use the mkdir()
instance method.
The next thing is create another path object called r
and use the instance method touch()
.
The mkdir(exist_ok=True)
method can take in an argument. This prevents a FileExistsError
from being raised.
Opening a File in a Path
There is an open
instance method that works like the builtin open
function. So we can do something
like this:
with r.open as file:
file.readline
In conclusion
There is more than can be learnt on the pathlib documentation page, which can be found here
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