Python - Can (or should) I change os.path.sep?

Question

I am writing a script to parse multiple log files and maintain a list of the files that have been processed. When I read the list of files to process I use os.walk and get names similar to the following:

C:/Users/Python/Documents/Logs\ServerUI04\SystemOut_13.01.01_20.22.25.log

This is created by the following code:

filesToProcess.extend(os.path.join(root, filename) for filename in filenames if logFilePatternMatch.match(filename))

It appears that "root" used forward slashes as the separator (I am on Windows and find that more convenient) but "filename" uses backslashes so I end up with an inconsistent path for the file as it contains a mixture of forward and back slashes as separators.

I have tried setting the separator with:

os.path.sep = "/"

and

os.sep = "/"

Before the .join but it seems to have no effect. I realize that in theory I could manipulate the string but longer term I'd like my script to run on Unix as well as Windows so would prefer that it be dynamic if possible.

Am I missing something?

Update:

Based on the helpful responses below it looks like my problem was self inflicted, for convenience I had set the initial path used as root like this:

logFileFolder = ['C:/Users/Python/Documents/Logs']

When I changed it to this:

logFileFolder = ['C:\\Users\\Python\\Documents\\Logs']

Everything works and my resulting file paths all use the "\" throughout. It looks like my approach was wrong in that I was trying to get Python to change behavior rather than correcting what I was setting as a value.

Thank you!

Answer 1

I would keep my fingers off os.sep and use os.path.normpath() on the result of combining the root and a filename:

filesToProcess.extend(os.path.normpath(os.path.join(root, filename)) 
            for filename in filenames if logFilePatternMatch.match(filename))