pathlib.md

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Instead of using os.path, use pathlib.Path. see the pathlib docs for more information.

It is less clunky. Compare:

import os

filepath = os.path.join(os.path.expanduser("~"), "data", "file.txt")

with

from pathlib import Path

filepath = Path.home() / "data" / "file.txt"

If we want the filename without the suffix, with os we would need to do something like:

basefile = os.path.splittext(os.path.basename(filepath))[0]
suffix = os.path.splittext(os.path.basename(filepath))[-1]

where as pathlib would give us:

basefile = filepath.stem
suffix = filepath.suffix

In addition, pathlib has a lot of other useful methods, like glob and rglob. Example of using glob:

from pathlib import Path

for filepath in Path.home().glob("*.txt"):
    print(filepath)

This will print all the files in your home directory that end with .txt.

There is always a lot of confusion about paths for people that start with programming. So make sure to check path.md, in addition to checking if a path exists:

path = Path("path/to/file.txt")

if not path.exists():
    print(f"File {path} does not exist!")

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