Python change working direcory does not work properly?

Question

Im new to python and are trying to figure out this for hours.. I want to change the working directory with os in my script by using

os.chdir("~") # not working.

os.getcwd #--> "/home/pi/Documents"

#I want to change into a subfolder I tried following
"subfolder"
"subfolder/"
"~../subfolder"
"/subfolder"

Tried:

sys.path.append. 

Answer 1

In a shell, ~ refers to the home directory of the invoking user ($HOME).

os.chdir takes a literal directory name as string. So, with just os.chdir("~"), you are trying to cd into the ~ directory relatively (from the current working directory), which does not exist.

You need to use os.path.expanduser to expand the ~ to the value of $HOME beforehand:

os.chdir(os.path.expanduser('~'))

Note that, you need to use os.path.expanduser for ~user references as well, which refers to the $HOME of user.

Answer 2

if you are in the directory /home/pi/Dokuments and you want to go to /home/pi/Dokuments/subfolder, you might want to try the following:

os.chdir(os.path.join(os.getcwd(), "subfolder"))