Aug 24, 2011 · from os import path file_path = path.relpath("2091/data.txt") with open(file_path) as f: <do stuff> should work fine. The path module is able to format a path for whatever operating system it's running on.

Sep 9, 2015 · When you use .. in a path, that means the parent directory. So in this case, if you are currently in subfldr2, then .. is parentDirectory, and ../subfldr1/testfile.txt is the relative path (relative to your current working directory) to the file. If you know the full path to the file you can just do something similar to this.

There is no need to use getcwd(), because the os.path.abspath() function does this for you. os.path.realpath() calls os.path.abspath().

Mar 4, 2025 · One of the simplest ways to open a file in a different directory is by using its absolute path. An absolute path provides the full location of the file, making it easy for Python to locate it, regardless of your current working directory. Here’s how you can do it: content = file.read() print(content) Output: This is the content of the file.

Jul 25, 2021 · We can open a file using both relative path and absolute path. The path is the location of the file on the disk. An absolute path contains the complete directory list required to locate the file. A relative path contains the current directory and then the file name.

Jul 24, 2020 · For those of you short on time, the quickest way to open a file in Python is take advantage of the open() function. Specifically, all we need to do is pass a path to the function: open('/path/to/file/'). Alternatively, we can take advantage of the pathlib module which allows us to store Path objects.

To open the file, use the built-in open() function. The open() function returns a file object, which has a read() method for reading the content of the file: If the file is located in a different location, you will have to specify the file path, like this: Open a file on a different location: You can also use the with statement when opening a file:

May 2, 2025 · Python also uses backslashes() to indicate escape sequences, such as ‘n’ for new line and ‘t’ for tab. This can cause confusion and errors because Python might think the backslash is part of a special character instead of a file path. File Paths in macOS and Linux: On macOS and Linux, file paths use forward slashes (/).

Nov 6, 2024 · In this guide, we will illuminate practical methodologies to access files via relative paths using Python’s built-in libraries, ensuring that your code operates smoothly across different operating systems. Scenario: Imagine your Python code is executed from a directory called main, and it requires access to the file main/2091/data.txt.

Reading and writing data to files using Python is pretty straightforward. To do this, you must first open files in the appropriate mode. Here’s an example of how to use Python’s “with open (…) as …” pattern to open a text file and read its contents: open() takes a filename and a mode as its arguments. r opens the file in read only mode.