Question

If I have a path for a given file, say 'C:\Folder\OtherFolder\AnotherFolder\file.txt', is there a way in python I can get all the parent directories for file.txt up to 'OtherFolder'? The depth of the path is not constant, so I can’t just iterate back a certain number of times, but I always need to get up to 'OtherFolder' regardless of depth. I feel like this should be easier than I’m making it, but they say Thursday is the new Monday. 🙂

Answer 1

If you are using Windows, try this:

import os
os.path.relpath('C:\Folder\OtherFolder\AnotherFolder\file.txt', 'C:\Folder\OtherFolder')

You can then split it using os.path.sep (in your case \):

rel_path.split(os.path.sep)

to get the individual directories.

On a Linux machine a similar call returns what you mean:

os.path.relpath('/Folder/OtherFolder/AnotherFolder/file.txt', '/Folder/OtherFolder')
# returns 'AnotherFolder/file.txt'

rel_path.split(os.path.sep)
# returns ['AnotherFolder', 'file.txt']