Python Programming On Win32

Miscellaneous System Data

The follow data values can support path-manipulation operations. These are defined for all platforms. Higher-level operations on pathnames are defined in the os.path module.

curdir

The constant string used by the OS to refer to the current directory, e.g., “.” for POSIX or “:” for the Macintosh.

pardir

The constant string used by the OS to refer to the parent directory, e.g., “..” for POSIX or “::” for the Macintosh.

sep

The character used by the OS to separate pathname components, e.g., “/” for POSIX or “:” for the Macintosh. This character isn’t sufficient to parse or concatenate pathnames (use os.path.split() and os.path.join()) but it’s occasionally useful.

altsep

An alternative character used by the OS to separate pathname components or None if only one separator character exists. This is set to “/ " on DOS and Windows systems where sep is a backslash.

pathsep

The character conventionally used by the OS to separate search patch components (as in $PATH), e.g., “:” for POSIX or “;” for DOS and Windows.

defpath

The default search path used by exec*p*() if the environment doesn’t have a 'PATH' key.

linesep

The string that separates (or, rather, terminates) lines on the current platform. This may be a single character, e.g., \n for POSIX or \r for MacOS, or multiple characters, e.g., \r\n for MS-DOS and MS Windows.