How do you find the first element of a path?

Question

I just downloaded Python 3.4 and I'm wondering how you would go about finding the first directory of a relative path? I.e. given the path a/b/c/d I would like to print a.

The closest I've gotten is:

from pathlib import Path
print(list(Path('a/b/c/d').parents)[-2])

or

p = Path('a/b/c/d')
print(p.parents[len(p.parents) - 2])

in both cases the -2 part is a bit magical. I've read the docs and the PEP, and haven't found any better way.. did I miss something obvious?

Answer 1

Use parts attribute:

>>> from pathlib import Path
>>> Path('a/b/c/d').parts
('a', 'b', 'c', 'd')
>>> Path('a/b/c/d').parts[0]
'a'

Answer 2

Path.parts is what you need.

p = Path("a/b/c/d")
print(p.parts[0])