Files in unix and windows

[Travis James Kleeburg]

I am trying to copy files from one directory into another using
shutil.copy. I am having a problem getting a usable path using
os.path.abspath because it doesnt return a string with the extra
backslashes and i was wondering if there was a better system call to use?
I am also looking for a system call so there wont be a problem between windows and
unix.

[Jeff Epler]

Which extra (back)slashes do you mean? Do you mean that os.path.abspath
strips the trailing separator characters from its argument?

os.path.abspath("../../../../etc/") '/etc' os.path.normpath("./") '.'

This behavior doesn't seem to be specifically documented.

If preserving the trailing '/' when present is important, you can easily
get this behavior using os.path.abspath:
def myabspath(p):
hadsep = p and p[-1] in (os.sep, os.altsep)
p = os.path.abspath(p)
if hadsep: p = p + os.sep
return p
myabspath('../../../../../etc/') '/etc/' myabspath('../../../../../etc')

'/etc'

Jeff

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[Byron]

Hi Travis,

You want to use forward slashes with your file names. Backslashes are
used for special character commands, such as "/t" for <tab>, etc.

For Windows:
c:/aFolder/testDocument.txt

For Unix / Linux
/aFolder/testDocument.txt

If you need a relative path, with no drive specified (for Windows), use:
/aFolder/testDocument.txt

Hope this helps,

Byron
---
Travis James Kleeburg wrote:

I am trying to copy files from one directory into another using
shutil.copy. I am having a problem getting a usable path using
os.path.abspath because it doesnt return a string with the extra
backslashes and i was wondering if there was a better system call to use?
I am also looking for a system call so there wont be a problem between windows and
unix.

[Byron]

Opps, correction. "\t" is for <tab> -- I had the slash going the wrong
direction.

Byron
---
Byron wrote:

Hi Travis,

You want to use forward slashes with your file names. Backslashes are
used for special character commands, such as "/t" for <tab>, etc.

For Windows:
c:/aFolder/testDocument.txt

For Unix / Linux
/aFolder/testDocument.txt

If you need a relative path, with no drive specified (for Windows),
use:
/aFolder/testDocument.txt

Hope this helps,

Byron
---
Travis James Kleeburg wrote:

I am trying to copy files from one directory into another using
shutil.copy. I am having a problem getting a usable path using
os.path.abspath because it doesnt return a string with the extra
backslashes and i was wondering if there was a better system call to
use? I am also looking for a system call so there wont be a problem
between windows and unix.