How to get folder name, in which given file resides, from pathlib.path?

Question

Is there something similar to os.path.dirname(path), but in pathlib?

Answer 1

It looks like there is a parents element that contains all the parent directories of a given path. E.g., if you start with:

>>> import pathlib >>> p = pathlib.Path('/path/to/my/file') 

Then p.parents[0] is the directory containing file:

>>> p.parents[0] PosixPath('/path/to/my') 

...and p.parents[1] will be the next directory up:

>>> p.parents[1] PosixPath('/path/to') 

Etc.

p.parent is another way to ask for p.parents[0]. You can convert a Path into a string and get pretty much what you would expect:

>>> str(p.parent) '/path/to/my' 

And also on any Path you can use the .absolute() method to get an absolute path:

>>> os.chdir('/etc') >>> p = pathlib.Path('../relative/path') >>> str(p.parent) '../relative' >>> str(p.parent.absolute()) '/etc/../relative' 

Note that os.path.dirname and pathlib treat paths with a trailing slash differently. The pathlib parent of some/path/ is some:

>>> p = pathlib.Path('some/path/') >>> p.parent PosixPath('some') 

While os.path.dirname on some/path/ returns some/path:

>>> os.path.dirname('some/path/') 'some/path'