Question

In PHP, the __DIR__ magic constant evaluates to the path to the directory containing the file in which that constant appears.

Is there an equivalent feature in Python?

Answer 1

os.path.dirname(__file__)

In Python 3.4 and newer, that’s it – you get an absolute path.

In earlier versions of Python, __file__ refers to the file location relative to the cwd at module import time. If you call chdir, the information will be lost. If this becomes an issue, you can add the following to the root of your module:

import os.path
_dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))

But again, if you only target Python 3.4+, this is no longer necessary.