What is partial[1:] doing in this code

Question

I am new to python and trying to understand the _full_path from this example.

  def _full_path(self, partial):
        if partial.startswith("/"):
            partial = partial[1:]
        path = os.path.join(self.root, partial)
        return path

What does the function do? Specifically, what does this line do?

 partial = partial[1:]

It seems like some kind of list manipulation -- but I can't find syntax like that in this document.

What is the root property of self that is getting called?

Can somebody explain a little bit about what is happening in that code.

Slicing is mentioned in the document you linked to; you just missed that the end can be omitted to default to the length. — Martijn Pieters, Nov 30 '13 at 01:00
simply creating a slice of the array. In other words it is slicing off everything before the item at index 1 and then it keeps the rest. — PurityLake, Nov 30 '13 at 01:06

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 30 '13 at 01:02

Because os.path.join will take later path start with '/' as base, try this:

print os.path.join('/a', '/b/')

it return '/b/', so you have to check and remove begin slash when you join path.

str is a sequence type, check here: http://docs.python.org/2/library/stdtypes.html#sequence-types-str-unicode-list-tuple-bytearray-buffer-xrange

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 30 '13 at 01:01

1

That line drops the starting "/".

The function itself gives back the "full path".

answered Nov 30 '13 at 01:01

Gerifield

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What is partial[1:] doing in this code

2 Answers2