Python in a Nutshell

Filesystem Operations

Using the os module, you can manipulate the filesystem in a variety of ways: creating, copying, and deleting files and directories, comparing files, and examining filesystem information about files and directories. This section documents the attributes and methods of the os module that you use for these purposes, and also covers some related modules that operate on the filesystem.

Path-String Attributes of the os Module

A file or directory is identified by a string, known as its path, whose syntax depends on the platform. On both Unix-like and Windows platforms, Python accepts Unix syntax for paths, with slash (/) as the directory separator. On non-Unix-like platforms, Python also accepts platform-specific path syntax. On Windows, for example, you can use backslash (\) as the separator. However, you do need to double up each backslash to \\ in normal string literals or use raw-string syntax as covered in Chapter 4. In the rest of this chapter, for brevity, Unix syntax is assumed in both explanations and examples.

Module os supplies attributes that provide details about path strings on the current platform. You should typically use the higher-level path manipulation operations covered in Section 10.2.4 later in this chapter, rather than lower-level string operations based on these attributes. However, the attributes may still be useful at times:

curdir

The string that denotes the current directory ('.' on Unix and Windows)

defpath

The default ...