Question

Python’s os.path.join has been described as “mostly pointless” because it discards any arguments prior to one containing a leading slash. Leaving aside for the moment that this is intentional and documented behaviour, is there a readily available function or code pattern which doesn’t discard like this?

Given HOMEPATH=\users\myname, the following will discard the beginning of the path

print os.path.join('C:\one', os.environ.get("HOMEPATH"), 'three')

result:

\Users\myname\three

desired:

C:\one\Users\myname\three

Having been bitten by this a few times, I’m pretty good now at noticing a leading slash when it’s something I’ve written, but what about when when you don’t know what the incoming string is looking like, as in this example?

Answer 1

Maybe os.environ.get("HOMEPATH").lstrip(os.path.sep)… it would be trivial to write your own version of join that did this on every argument (or the second and subsequent).