<< plib_os

Python Library os.path

os.path Introduction

os.path implements some useful functions on pathnames represented by string or bytes. The reason to support both string and bytes object is that, some names on Unix cannot be represented by Unicode string, vice versa, some names on Windows cannot be represented by bytes.

Refer to pathlib for the high-level object-oriented interface of file object. Since pathlib provides a more friendly OOP interface, in common one should use it instead of os.path.

Path-like Object

Since Python 3.6, almost all of the methods of os.path accepts a path-like object. A path-like object is an object representating a file system path, which can be

• A str or bytes object representing a path.
• An object implementating the os.PathLike protocol.

An object that supports the os.PathLike protocol can be converted to a str or bytes file system path by calling the os.fspath() function. os.fsdecode() and os.fsencode() can be used to guarantee a str or bytes instead, respectively. This is introduced by PEP519.

All kinds of Path classes implemented in pathlib support os.Pathlike protocol hence are path-like objects. That is, they can be used as the parameters feeding to os.path

os.path Utility Methods

File Examining

Note that the os.path module only support type checking whether a file is a regular file, a directory, and a link:

• os.path.isfile(path)
• os.path.isdir(path)
• os.path.islink(path)

Note that the isfile() and isdir() methods both follow symbolic links, so both isfile() and islink() can be True, or both isdir() and islink() can be True.

Use methods in pathlib to check whether is a block/character device, a socket, or a fifo.

File Information Retriving

Get the last access time, last modification time, ctime(time of the last metadata change for Unix, and the creation time for Windows).

• os.path.getatime(path)
• os.path.getmtime(path)
• os.path.getctime(path)

All the returned values of the three functions are timestamp in seconds.