Python joining current directory and parent directory with os.path.join

Question

I want to do join the current directory path and a relative directory path goal_dir somewhere up in the directory tree, so I get the absolute path to the goal_dir. This is my attempt:

import os goal_dir = os.path.join(os.getcwd(), "../../my_dir") 

Now, if the current directory is C:/here/I/am/, it joins them as C:/here/I/am/../../my_dir, but what I want is C:/here/my_dir. It seems that os.path.join is not that intelligent.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

You can use normpath, realpath or abspath:

import os goal_dir = os.path.join(os.getcwd(), "../../my_dir") print goal_dir  # prints C:/here/I/am/../../my_dir print os.path.normpath(goal_dir)  # prints C:/here/my_dir print os.path.realpath(goal_dir)  # prints C:/here/my_dir print os.path.abspath(goal_dir)  # prints C:/here/my_dir