missing slash in os.path.join result from tkinter filedialog

Question

What's wrong with the way I'm joining my path here?

Everything but the first item in the list will be properly joined.

I'm grabbing a path from a filedialog in tkinter.

i.e filedialog.askdirectory()

Example Path:

PATH = "C:/MyUserName/Desktop/SomeDir"

What I'm doing:

os.path.join(*(PATH.split("/") + ["somefile.txt"]))

This will print out the following:

C:MyUserName/Desktop/SomeDir/somefile.txt

Why does it lose the first /?

You don't need to use `split` before you call `join`. The first argument to `join` can just be `PATH`. — Bryan Oakley, Mar 10 '16 at 12:20

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 10 '16 at 06:22

I needed to convert my initial path using os.normpath I was getting a filedialog input from tkinter and then trying to use the above path style / code in the question to access / create files.

Because of the bad join / seperators on windows it was causing errors.

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 10 '16 at 06:24

You are using Windows, right?

From the Docs:

On Windows, the drive letter is not reset when an absolute path component (e.g., r'\foo') is encountered. If a component contains a drive letter, all previous components are thrown away and the drive letter is reset. Note that since there is a current directory for each drive, os.path.join("c:", "foo") represents a path relative to the current directory on drive C: (c:foo), not c:\foo.

This means that c:foo is in fact a correct path. Try os.path.abspath('c:foo') and os.path.abspath('c:\\foo') to see the difference. The first path is a relative path on the c drive and the second one is an absolute path.

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 10 '16 at 06:27

Windows keeps a current path for all drives. C:MyUserName/Desktop/SomeDir/somefile.txt and C:/MyUserName/Desktop/SomeDir/somefile.txt are both valid and there is no way for ntpath.join to know whether you wanted the drive-relative or drive-absolute path.

missing slash in os.path.join result from tkinter filedialog

3 Answers3

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