Misunderstanding of python os.path.abspath

Question

I have following code:

directory = r\'D:\\images\'
for file in os.listdir(directory):
    print(os.path.abspath(file))

and I want next outp

Answer 1

Python's native os.listdir and os.path functions are pretty low-level. Iterating through a directory (or a series of descending directories) requires your program to assemble file paths manually. It can be convenient to define a utility function that generates the paths you're going to need just once, so that path assembly logic doesn't have to be repeated in every directory iteration. For example:

import os

def better_listdir(dirpath):
    """
    Generator yielding (filename, filepath) tuples for every
    file in the given directory path.
    """
    # First clean up dirpath to absolutize relative paths and
    # symbolic path names (e.g. `.`, `..`, and `~`)
    dirpath = os.path.abspath(os.path.expanduser(dirpath))

    # List out (filename, filepath) tuples
    for filename in os.listdir(dirpath):
        yield (filename, os.path.join(dirpath, filename))

if __name__ == '__main__':
    for fname, fpath in better_listdir('~'):
        print fname, '->', fpath

Alternatively, there are "higher level" path modules that one can employ, such as py.path, path.py, and pathlib (now a standard part of Python, for version 3.4 and above, but available for 2.7 forward). Those add dependencies to your project, but up-level many aspects of file, filename, and filepath handling.