How to retrieve a module's path?

Question

I want to detect whether module has changed. Now, using inotify is simple, you just need to know the directory you want to get notifications from.

How do I retrieve

Answer 1

If the only caveat of using __file__ is when current, relative directory is blank (ie, when running as a script from the same directory where the script is), then a trivial solution is:

import os.path
mydir = os.path.dirname(__file__) or '.'
full  = os.path.abspath(mydir)
print __file__, mydir, full

And the result:

$ python teste.py 
teste.py . /home/user/work/teste

The trick is in or '.' after the dirname() call. It sets the dir as ., which means current directory and is a valid directory for any path-related function.

Thus, using abspath() is not truly needed. But if you use it anyway, the trick is not needed: abspath() accepts blank paths and properly interprets it as the current directory.