File names with slashes [was Re: error in os.chdir]

[Mark Lawrence]

On 04/07/18 21:30, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 5, 2018 at 6:25 AM, Mikhail V <mikhailwas at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
>>
>>>> On Windows a path is e.g.:
>>>> C:\programs\util\
>>>> So what is reasonable about using forward slashes?
>>>> It happens to me that I need to copy-paste real paths like 100 times
>>>> a day into scripts - do you propose to convert to forward slashes each time?
>>
>>> That's what started the thread -- using backslashes caused a \a to be
>>> interpreted as a special character instead of two characters in the
>>> path.
>>
>> Yes, and the answer was a week ago: just put "r" before  the string.
>> r"C:\programs\util"
>>
>> And it worked till now. So why should I replace backslashes with
>> forward slashes?
>> There is one issue that I can't write \ on the end:
>> r"C:\programs\util\"
>>
>> But since I know it's a path and not a file, I just write without trailing \.
> 
> That's exactly the issue. But if you just always separate paths with
> forward slashes, you never have a problem. There is no "replace"
> happening; you simply use the correct path separation character from
> the start. You can assemble strings from pieces without having to
> remember to slap an "r" in front of each literal; you can have slashes
> at the ends of strings; everything will just work.
> 
> ChrisA
> 

Maybe it would be smarter to build paths using os.sep, os.path.join and 
os.path.split rather than use literal strings.  There is also os.altsep 
https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#os.altsep which if I'd heard 
about I'd forgotten about :)  And others.  Failing that there's always 
pathlib https://docs.python.org/3/library/pathlib.html

-- 
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask
what you can do for our language.

Mark Lawrence