I am storing paths in a json file using a python script. I want the paths to be stored in the same format (Unix-style) no matter which OS the script is run on. So basically I want to run the os.path.normpath function, but it only converts paths to Unix-style instead of changing its function depending on the host OS. What is the best way to do this?
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2 Answers
You can convert Windows-style path to UNIX-style after calling os.path.normpath. The conversion can be conveniently done with pathlib.PureWindowsPath.as_posix:
import os.path
from pathlib import PureWindowsPath
path = r'\foo\\bar'
path = os.path.normpath(path)
if os.path.sep == '\\':
path = PureWindowsPath(path).as_posix()
print(path)
This outputs, in Windows:
/foo/bar
Comments
There are four cases to handle, all of which should output a normalized Posix path:
- Windows path on Posix system
- Posix path on Posix system
- Windows path on Windows system
- Posix path on Windows system
The other answer is close but doesn't handle all of these. This does:
from os.path import normpath
from pathlib import PureWindowsPath
def convert(path):
return PureWindowsPath(normpath(PureWindowsPath(path).as_posix())).as_posix()
print('Windows path: ' + convert(r'.\path\to\..\to\file'))
print('Posix path: ' + convert('./path/to/../to/file'))
which will output the following on both Windows and Posix systems:
Windows path: path/to/file
Posix path: path/to/file
Two nested PureWindowsPath instances are necessary to handle case 1, Windows path on a Posix system. If you don't care about that case and only need to handle the other three cases, a single nested call is sufficient:
def convert(path):
return PureWindowsPath(normpath(path)).as_posix()
Since normpath is able to normalize Posix paths on Windows, but normath does not normalize Windows paths on Posix systems.