Returning the path of a file

[Steven D. Majewski]

On Fri, 5 Jan 2001, Daniel Klein wrote:

> I've search the Beazley book as well as the Python reference materials
> and can't find answers to these two basically simple questions:
> 
> 1) How to return the path of a file previously opened in read-only
> mode?
> 
> 	myfile = open("foo")
> 
> I know I can do something like
> 
> 	os.getcwd()
> 
> and this is where 'myfile' is, but if the file was opened by some
> other method, I would like to be able to interrogate where it was
> opened from.
> 
> 

file.name gives you the name used in opening the file.

If you open it with with no path or a relative path, 
that's what you'll get back:

>>> file = open( 'test.py' )
>>> file.name
'test.py'

If you open it with the full pathname, you'll get that back:

>>> import os
>>> file2 = open( os.path.abspath('test.py' ))
>>> file2.name
'/Users/sdm7g/test.py'


And if you need to do this a lot and  you can't remember to use the
absolute path all the time, you can redefine the open function to
do it for you:

>>> import __builtin__
>>> import os
>>> def open( filename, *args ):
...     return apply( __builtin__.open, ( os.path.abspath(filename),) +  args )


-- Steve Majewski <sdm7g at Virginia.EDU>