pathlib

When working with file paths in Python, the pathlib module provides a great way of dealing with file paths in an object-oriented way. This is an improvement over using string manipulation for file paths, which can be error-prone and less readable:

from pathlib import Path

p = Path('.')      # '.' represents the current directory
print(p, type(p))  # <class 'pathlib.PosixPath'> or <class 'pathlib.WindowsPath'> depending on your operating system

You can join paths using the / operator. For instance, to represent a file example.txt in the current directory, you can do:

file_path = p / 'example.txt'  # constructs a new path
print(file_path)               # example.txt

The / operator works regardless of the underlying operating system and uses the correct path separator. Notice how the / operator is actually the __truediv__() magic method in the Path class, which makes working with Path objects very intuitive.

To get an absolute path from a Path object, you can use the absolute() method:

abs_path = file_path.absolute()  # get the absolute path
print(abs_path)                  # prints the absolute path, like /home/user/example.txt on Unix or C:\\user\\example.txt on Windows

The Path class has many useful methods for common operations:

Path.cwd(): returns the current working directory as a new Path object

Path.home(): returns the home directory as a new Path object

Path.exists(): checks if the path exists

Path.is_file(): checks if the path is a file

Path.is_dir(): checks if the path is a directory

Path.mkdir(): makes a new directory at the path

Path.glob(): returns a generator yielding all matching files in the directory

Let's see how some of these methods are used:

print(Path.cwd())             # prints current working directory
print(Path.home())            # prints home directory

if not file_path.exists():    # check if a file exists
    print(f'The file {file_path} does not exist.')

if file_path.is_file():       # check if it is a file
    print(f'{file_path} is a file.')

new_dir = p / 'new_dir'
new_dir.mkdir(exist_ok=True)  # create a new directory, do nothing if it exists

for file in p.glob('*.txt'):  # iterate over all .txt files in the current directory
    print(file)

Remember to replace p with your Path object and 'example.txt' with your file name as appropriate. The pathlib module is a powerful tool for file and directory manipulation in Python.

Challenge: Relative to Absolute

The advent of digital archives has made the management of a huge number of documents much more accessible. However, managing paths to these documents can sometimes be a bit tricky, especially when dealing with relative and absolute paths. You work as a software developer at a digital archive company. Your task is to build a program that can convert relative paths to absolute paths to ensure proper document tracking and accessibility.

Given a relative path, your program should print its corresponding absolute path.

The only line of the input contains a single relative path.

The output of your program should be the absolute path corresponding to the inputted relative path.

Input	Output
./documents/report.pdf	/tmp/documents/report.pdf
folder2/file2.txt	/tmp/folder2/file2.txt

Challenge: Relative to Absolute

Constraints

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