Question

How do I determine:

1. the current directory (where I was in the shell when I ran the Python script), and
2. where the Python file I am executing is?

Answer 1

To get the full path to the directory a Python file is contained in, write this in that file:

import os 
dir_path = os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__))

(Note that the incantation above won’t work if you’ve already used os.chdir() to change your current working directory, since the value of the __file__ constant is relative to the current working directory and is not changed by an os.chdir() call.)

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To get the current working directory use

import os
cwd = os.getcwd()

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Documentation references for the modules, constants and functions used above:

• The os and os.path modules.
• The __file__ constant
• os.path.realpath(path) (returns “the canonical path of the specified filename, eliminating any symbolic links encountered in the path”)
• os.path.dirname(path) (returns “the directory name of pathname path“)
• os.getcwd() (returns “a string representing the current working directory”)
• os.chdir(path) (“change the current working directory to path“)