- 1 year ago
Why on Windows, python3, os.path.abspath doesn't deal with leading slashes the same way if it's just a dir or if it's more?
On Windows, the behavior of os.path.abspath
with leading slashes (/
) depends on the number of leading slashes and the presence of the drive letter in the path.
Absolute Paths without Drive Letter: If the path begins with a single leading slash (
/
) and does not include a drive letter,os.path.abspath
treats it as a relative path and resolves it relative to the current working directory. The leading slash is ignored, and the result is an absolute path based on the current working directory.Example:
pythonimport os
path = '/dir/file.txt'
absolute_path = os.path.abspath(path)
print(absolute_path)
# Output: C:\current\working\directory\dir\file.txt
Absolute Paths with Drive Letter: If the path begins with two leading slashes (
//
) followed by a drive letter,os.path.abspath
treats it as an absolute path with a drive letter. In this case, the leading slashes are preserved, and the result is the same as the input path.Example:
pythonimport os
path = '//C:/dir/file.txt'
absolute_path = os.path.abspath(path)
print(absolute_path)
# Output: //C:/dir/file.txt
It's important to note that Windows file systems typically use backslashes (\
) as the path separator, but Python's os.path.abspath
and related functions can handle both forward slashes (/
) and backslashes (\
) as path separators on Windows.
In general, it's recommended to use raw string literals (prefixed with r
) for Windows paths to avoid any unwanted interpretation of escape sequences. For example:
pythonimport os
path = r'C:\dir\file.txt'
absolute_path = os.path.abspath(path)
print(absolute_path)
# Output: C:\dir\file.txt
By using raw string literals, you ensure that backslashes are treated as literal characters without any escape sequence interpretation.