What's the working directory when using IDLE?

Question

So, I'm learning Python and would like to create a simple script to download a file from the internet and then write it to a file. However, I am using IDLE and have no idea what the working directory is in IDLE or how to change it. How can I do file system stuff in IDLE if I don't know the working directory or how to change it?

Answer 1

You can easily check that yourself using os.getcwd:

>>> import os >>> os.getcwd() 'C:\\Program Files\\Python33' 

That’s on my Windows machine, so it’s probably the installation directory of Python itself.

You can change that directory at runtime using os.chdir:

>>> os.chdir('C:\\Users\\poke\\Desktop\\') >>> os.getcwd() 'C:\\Users\\poke\\Desktop' >>> with open('someFile.txt', 'w+') as f:         f.write('This should be at C:\\Users\\poke\\Desktop\\someFile.txt now.') 

This will—not surprisingly—create the file on my desktop.

Answer 2

You can check that using os.getcwd():

In [1]: import os  In [2]: os.getcwd() Out[2]: '/home/monty'  In [7]: os.chdir("codechef")    #change current working directory  In [8]: os.getcwd() Out[8]: '/home/monty/codechef' 

os.chdir():

In [4]: os.chdir? Type:       builtin_function_or_method String Form:<built-in function chdir> Docstring: chdir(path) 

os.getcwd():

Change the current working directory to the specified path.  In [5]: os.getcwd? Type:       builtin_function_or_method String Form:<built-in function getcwd> Docstring: getcwd() -> path  Return a string representing the current working directory.