How to replace (or strip) an extension from a filename in Python?

Question

Is there a built-in function in Python that would replace (or remove, whatever) the extension of a filename (if it has one) ?

Example:

print replace_         


        

Answer 1

Try os.path.splitext it should do what you want.

import os
print os.path.splitext('/home/user/somefile.txt')[0]+'.jpg'

Answer 2

Another way to do is to use the str.rpartition(sep) method.

For example:

filename = '/home/user/somefile.txt'
(prefix, sep, suffix) = filename.rpartition('.')

new_filename = prefix + '.jpg'

print new_filename

Answer 3

I prefer the following one-liner approach using str.rsplit():

my_filename.rsplit('.', 1)[0] + '.jpg'

Example:

>>> my_filename = '/home/user/somefile.txt'
>>> my_filename.rsplit('.', 1)
>>> ['/home/user/somefile', 'txt']

Answer 4

Expanding on AnaPana's answer, how to remove an extension using pathlib (Python >= 3.4):

>>> from pathlib import Path

>>> filename = Path('/some/path/somefile.txt')

>>> filename_wo_ext = filename.with_suffix('')

>>> filename_replace_ext = filename.with_suffix('.jpg')

>>> print(filename)
/some/path/somefile.ext    

>>> print(filename_wo_ext)
/some/path/somefile

>>> print(filename_replace_ext)
/some/path/somefile.jpg

Answer 5

Handling multiple extensions

In the case where you have multiple extensions this one-liner using pathlib and str.replace works a treat:

Remove/strip extensions

>>> from pathlib import Path
>>> p = Path("/path/to/myfile.tar.gz")
>>> str(p).replace("".join(p.suffixes), "")
'/path/to/myfile'

Replace extensions

>>> p = Path("/path/to/myfile.tar.gz")
>>> new_ext = ".jpg"
>>> str(p).replace("".join(p.suffixes), new_ext)
'/path/to/myfile.jpg'

If you also want a pathlib object output then you can obviously wrap the line in Path()

>>> Path(str(p).replace("".join(p.suffixes), ""))
PosixPath('/path/to/myfile')

Wrapping it all up in a function

from pathlib import Path
from typing import Union

PathLike = Union[str, Path]


def replace_ext(path: PathLike, new_ext: str = "") -> Path:
    extensions = "".join(Path(path).suffixes)
    return Path(str(p).replace(extensions, new_ext))


p = Path("/path/to/myfile.tar.gz")
new_ext = ".jpg"

assert replace_ext(p, new_ext) == Path('/path/to/myfile.jpg')
assert replace_ext(str(p), new_ext) == Path('/path/to/myfile.jpg')
assert replace_ext(p) == Path('/path/to/myfile')

Answer 6

As @jethro said, splitext is the neat way to do it. But in this case, it's pretty easy to split it yourself, since the extension must be the part of the filename coming after the final period:

filename = '/home/user/somefile.txt'
print( filename.rsplit( ".", 1 )[ 0 ] )
# '/home/user/somefile'

The rsplit tells Python to perform the string splits starting from the right of the string, and the 1 says to perform at most one split (so that e.g. 'foo.bar.baz' -> [ 'foo.bar', 'baz' ]). Since rsplit will always return a non-empty array, we may safely index 0 into it to get the filename minus the extension.