Replace Backslashes with Forward Slashes in Python

Question

I\'m writing a cross platform file explorer in python. I am trying to convert any backslashes in a path into forward slashes in order to deal with all paths in one format.

Answer 1

Elaborating this answer, with pathlib you can use the as_posix method:

>>> import pathlib
>>> p = pathlib.PureWindowsPath(r'\dir\anotherdir\foodir\more')
>>> print(p)    
\dir\anotherdir\foodir\more
>>> print(p.as_posix())
/dir/anotherdir/foodir/more
>>> str(p)
'\\dir\\anotherdir\\foodir\\more'
>>> str(p.as_posix())
'/dir/anotherdir/foodir/more'

Answer 2

You should use os.path for this kind of stuff. In Python 3, you can also use pathlib to represent paths in a portable manner, so you don't have to worry about things like slashes anymore.

Answer 3

Doesn't this work:

    >>> s = 'a\\b'
    >>> s
    'a\\b'
    >>> print s
    a\b
    >>> s.replace('\\','/')
    'a/b'

?

EDIT:

Of course this is a string-based solution, and using os.path is wiser if you're dealing with filesystem paths.