API

Important

The documented methods’ signatures are not always correct. See path.Path.

Path Pie

Implements path.Path - An object representing a path to a file or directory.

Example:

from path import Path
d = Path('/home/guido/bin')

# Globbing
for f in d.files('*.py'):
    f.chmod(0o755)

# Changing the working directory:
with Path("somewhere"):
    # cwd in now `somewhere`
    ...

# Concatenate paths with /
foo_txt = Path("bar") / "foo.txt"
class path.Path(other='')

Represents a filesystem path.

For documentation on individual methods, consult their counterparts in os.path.

Some methods are additionally included from shutil. The functions are linked directly into the class namespace such that they will be bound to the Path instance. For example, Path(src).copy(target) is equivalent to shutil.copy(src, target). Therefore, when referencing the docs for these methods, assume src references self, the Path instance.

abspath()

See also

os.path.abspath()

access(*args, **kwargs)

Return does the real user have access to this path.

>>> Path('.').access(os.F_OK)
True

See also

os.access()

property atime

Last access time of the file.

>>> Path('.').atime > 0
True

Allows setting:

>>> some_file = Path(getfixture('tmp_path')).joinpath('file.txt').touch()
>>> MST = datetime.timezone(datetime.timedelta(hours=-7))
>>> some_file.atime = datetime.datetime(1976, 5, 7, 10, tzinfo=MST)
>>> some_file.atime
200336400.0

See also

getatime(), os.path.getatime()

basename()

See also

name, os.path.basename()

bytes()

Open this file, read all bytes, return them as a string.

cd()

See also

os.chdir()

chdir()

See also

os.chdir()

chmod(mode)

Set the mode. May be the new mode (os.chmod behavior) or a symbolic mode.

>>> a_file = Path(getfixture('tmp_path')).joinpath('afile.txt').touch()
>>> a_file.chmod(0o700)
Path(...
>>> a_file.chmod('u+x')
Path(...

See also

os.chmod()

chown(uid=- 1, gid=- 1)

Change the owner and group by names or numbers.

See also

os.chown()

chroot()

See also

os.chroot()

chunks(size, *args, **kwargs)
Returns a generator yielding chunks of the file, so it can

be read piece by piece with a simple for loop.

Any argument you pass after size will be passed to open().

Example:
>>> hash = hashlib.md5()
>>> for chunk in Path("NEWS.rst").chunks(8192, mode='rb'):
...     hash.update(chunk)

This will read the file by chunks of 8192 bytes.

copy(dst, *, follow_symlinks=True)

Copy data and mode bits (“cp src dst”). Return the file’s destination.

The destination may be a directory.

If follow_symlinks is false, symlinks won’t be followed. This resembles GNU’s “cp -P src dst”.

If source and destination are the same file, a SameFileError will be raised.

copy2(dst, *, follow_symlinks=True)

Copy data and metadata. Return the file’s destination.

Metadata is copied with copystat(). Please see the copystat function for more information.

The destination may be a directory.

If follow_symlinks is false, symlinks won’t be followed. This resembles GNU’s “cp -P src dst”.

copyfile(dst, *, follow_symlinks=True)

Copy data from src to dst in the most efficient way possible.

If follow_symlinks is not set and src is a symbolic link, a new symlink will be created instead of copying the file it points to.

copymode(dst, *, follow_symlinks=True)

Copy mode bits from src to dst.

If follow_symlinks is not set, symlinks aren’t followed if and only if both src and dst are symlinks. If lchmod isn’t available (e.g. Linux) this method does nothing.

copystat(dst, *, follow_symlinks=True)

Copy file metadata

Copy the permission bits, last access time, last modification time, and flags from src to dst. On Linux, copystat() also copies the “extended attributes” where possible. The file contents, owner, and group are unaffected. src and dst are path-like objects or path names given as strings.

If the optional flag follow_symlinks is not set, symlinks aren’t followed if and only if both src and dst are symlinks.

copytree(dst, symlinks=False, ignore=None, copy_function=copy2, ignore_dangling_symlinks=False, dirs_exist_ok=False)

Recursively copy a directory tree and return the destination directory.

If exception(s) occur, an Error is raised with a list of reasons.

If the optional symlinks flag is true, symbolic links in the source tree result in symbolic links in the destination tree; if it is false, the contents of the files pointed to by symbolic links are copied. If the file pointed by the symlink doesn’t exist, an exception will be added in the list of errors raised in an Error exception at the end of the copy process.

You can set the optional ignore_dangling_symlinks flag to true if you want to silence this exception. Notice that this has no effect on platforms that don’t support os.symlink.

The optional ignore argument is a callable. If given, it is called with the src parameter, which is the directory being visited by copytree(), and names which is the list of src contents, as returned by os.listdir():

callable(src, names) -> ignored_names

Since copytree() is called recursively, the callable will be called once for each directory that is copied. It returns a list of names relative to the src directory that should not be copied.

The optional copy_function argument is a callable that will be used to copy each file. It will be called with the source path and the destination path as arguments. By default, copy2() is used, but any function that supports the same signature (like copy()) can be used.

If dirs_exist_ok is false (the default) and dst already exists, a FileExistsError is raised. If dirs_exist_ok is true, the copying operation will continue if it encounters existing directories, and files within the dst tree will be overwritten by corresponding files from the src tree.

property ctime

Creation time of the file.

See also

getctime(), os.path.getctime()

dirname()

See also

parent, os.path.dirname()

dirs(*args, **kwargs)

List of this directory’s subdirectories.

The elements of the list are Path objects. This does not walk recursively into subdirectories (but see walkdirs()).

Accepts parameters to listdir().

property drive

The drive specifier, for example 'C:'.

This is always empty on systems that don’t use drive specifiers.

exists()

See also

os.path.exists()

expand()

Clean up a filename by calling expandvars(), expanduser(), and normpath() on it.

This is commonly everything needed to clean up a filename read from a configuration file, for example.

expanduser()

See also

os.path.expanduser()

expandvars()

See also

os.path.expandvars()

property ext

The file extension, for example '.py'.

files(*args, **kwargs)

List of the files in self.

The elements of the list are Path objects. This does not walk into subdirectories (see walkfiles()).

Accepts parameters to listdir().

fnmatch(pattern, normcase=None)

Return True if self.name matches the given pattern.

pattern - A filename pattern with wildcards,

for example '*.py'. If the pattern contains a normcase attribute, it is applied to the name and path prior to comparison.

normcase - (optional) A function used to normalize the pattern and

filename before matching. Defaults to normcase from self.module, os.path.normcase().

See also

fnmatch.fnmatch()

get_owner()

Return the name of the owner of this file or directory. Follow symbolic links.

See also

owner

getatime()

See also

atime, os.path.getatime()

getctime()

See also

ctime, os.path.getctime()

classmethod getcwd()

Return the current working directory as a path object.

See also

os.getcwd()

getmtime()

See also

mtime, os.path.getmtime()

getsize()

See also

size, os.path.getsize()

glob(pattern)

Return a list of Path objects that match the pattern.

pattern - a path relative to this directory, with wildcards.

For example, Path('/users').glob('*/bin/*') returns a list of all the files users have in their bin directories.

See also

glob.glob()

Note

Glob is not recursive, even when using **. To do recursive globbing see walk(), walkdirs() or walkfiles().

iglob(pattern)

Return an iterator of Path objects that match the pattern.

pattern - a path relative to this directory, with wildcards.

For example, Path('/users').iglob('*/bin/*') returns an iterator of all the files users have in their bin directories.

See also

glob.iglob()

Note

Glob is not recursive, even when using **. To do recursive globbing see walk(), walkdirs() or walkfiles().

in_place(mode='r', buffering=- 1, encoding=None, errors=None, newline=None, backup_extension=None)

A context in which a file may be re-written in-place with new content.

Yields a tuple of (readable, writable) file objects, where writable replaces readable.

If an exception occurs, the old file is restored, removing the written data.

Mode must not use 'w', 'a', or '+'; only read-only-modes are allowed. A ValueError is raised on invalid modes.

For example, to add line numbers to a file:

p = Path(filename)
assert p.isfile()
with p.in_place() as (reader, writer):
    for number, line in enumerate(reader, 1):
        writer.write('{0:3}: '.format(number)))
        writer.write(line)

Thereafter, the file at filename will have line numbers in it.

isabs()
>>> Path('.').isabs()
False

See also

os.path.isabs()

isdir()

See also

os.path.isdir()

isfile()

See also

os.path.isfile()

See also

os.path.islink()

ismount()
>>> Path('.').ismount()
False

See also

os.path.ismount()

joinpath(*others)

Join first to zero or more Path components, adding a separator character (first.module.sep) if needed. Returns a new instance of first._next_class.

See also

os.path.join()

lines(encoding=None, errors=None, retain=True)

Open this file, read all lines, return them in a list.

Optional arguments:
encoding - The Unicode encoding (or character set) of

the file. The default is None, meaning use locale.getpreferredencoding().

errors - How to handle Unicode errors; see

open for the options. Default is None meaning “strict”.

retain - If True (default), retain newline characters,

but translate all newline characters to \n. If False, newline characters are omitted.

See also

text()

Create a hard link at newpath, pointing to this file.

See also

os.link()

listdir(match=None)

List of items in this directory.

Use files() or dirs() instead if you want a listing of just files or just subdirectories.

The elements of the list are Path objects.

With the optional match argument, a callable, only return items whose names match the given pattern.

See also

files(), dirs()

lstat()

Like stat(), but do not follow symbolic links.

>>> Path('.').lstat() == Path('.').stat()
True

See also

stat(), os.lstat()

makedirs(mode=0o777)

See also

os.makedirs()

makedirs_p(mode=0o777)

Like makedirs(), but does not raise an exception if the directory already exists.

merge_tree(dst, symlinks=False, *, copy_function=shutil.copy2, ignore=lambda dir, contents: ...)

Copy entire contents of self to dst, overwriting existing contents in dst with those in self.

Pass symlinks=True to copy symbolic links as links.

Accepts a copy_function, similar to copytree.

To avoid overwriting newer files, supply a copy function wrapped in only_newer. For example:

src.merge_tree(dst, copy_function=only_newer(shutil.copy2))
mkdir(mode=0o777)

See also

os.mkdir()

mkdir_p(mode=0o777)

Like mkdir(), but does not raise an exception if the directory already exists.

module = <module 'posixpath' from '/usr/lib64/python3.10/posixpath.py'>

The path module to use for path operations.

See also

os.path

move(dst, copy_function=copy2)

Recursively move a file or directory to another location. This is similar to the Unix “mv” command. Return the file or directory’s destination.

If the destination is a directory or a symlink to a directory, the source is moved inside the directory. The destination path must not already exist.

If the destination already exists but is not a directory, it may be overwritten depending on os.rename() semantics.

If the destination is on our current filesystem, then rename() is used. Otherwise, src is copied to the destination and then removed. Symlinks are recreated under the new name if os.rename() fails because of cross filesystem renames.

The optional copy_function argument is a callable that will be used to copy the source or it will be delegated to copytree. By default, copy2() is used, but any function that supports the same signature (like copy()) can be used.

A lot more could be done here… A look at a mv.c shows a lot of the issues this implementation glosses over.

property mtime

Last modified time of the file.

Allows setting:

>>> some_file = Path(getfixture('tmp_path')).joinpath('file.txt').touch()
>>> MST = datetime.timezone(datetime.timedelta(hours=-7))
>>> some_file.mtime = datetime.datetime(1976, 5, 7, 10, tzinfo=MST)
>>> some_file.mtime
200336400.0

See also

getmtime(), os.path.getmtime()

property name

The name of this file or directory without the full path.

For example, Path('/usr/local/lib/libpython.so').name == 'libpython.so'

See also

basename(), os.path.basename()

normcase()

See also

os.path.normcase()

normpath()

See also

os.path.normpath()

open(*args, **kwargs)

Open this file and return a corresponding file object.

Keyword arguments work as in io.open(). If the file cannot be opened, an OSError is raised.

property owner

Name of the owner of this file or directory.

See also

get_owner()

property parent

This path’s parent directory, as a new Path object.

For example, Path('/usr/local/lib/libpython.so').parent == Path('/usr/local/lib')

See also

dirname(), os.path.dirname()

parts()
>>> Path('/foo/bar/baz').parts()
(Path('/'), 'foo', 'bar', 'baz')
pathconf(name)

See also

os.pathconf()

property permissions: path.masks.Permissions

Permissions.

>>> perms = Path('.').permissions
>>> isinstance(perms, int)
True
>>> set(perms.symbolic) <= set('rwx-')
True
>>> perms.symbolic
'r...'
read_bytes()

Return the contents of this file as bytes.

read_hash(hash_name)

Calculate given hash for this file.

List of supported hashes can be obtained from hashlib package. This reads the entire file.

See also

hashlib.hash.digest()

read_hexhash(hash_name)

Calculate given hash for this file, returning hexdigest.

List of supported hashes can be obtained from hashlib package. This reads the entire file.

See also

hashlib.hash.hexdigest()

read_md5()

Calculate the md5 hash for this file.

This reads through the entire file.

See also

read_hash()

read_text(encoding=None, errors=None)

Open this file, read it in, return the content as a string.

Optional parameters are passed to open().

See also

lines()

Return the path to which this symbolic link points.

The result may be an absolute or a relative path.

See also

readlinkabs(), os.readlink()

readlinkabs()

Return the path to which this symbolic link points.

The result is always an absolute path.

See also

readlink(), os.readlink()

realpath()

See also

os.path.realpath()

relpath(start='.')

Return this path as a relative path, based from start, which defaults to the current working directory.

relpathto(dest)

Return a relative path from self to dest.

If there is no relative path from self to dest, for example if they reside on different drives in Windows, then this returns dest.abspath().

remove()

See also

os.remove()

remove_p()

Like remove(), but does not raise an exception if the file does not exist.

removedirs()

See also

os.removedirs()

removedirs_p()

Like removedirs(), but does not raise an exception if the directory is not empty or does not exist.

rename(new)

See also

os.rename()

renames(new)

See also

os.renames()

rmdir()

See also

os.rmdir()

rmdir_p()

Like rmdir(), but does not raise an exception if the directory is not empty or does not exist.

rmtree(ignore_errors=False, onerror=None)

Recursively delete a directory tree.

If ignore_errors is set, errors are ignored; otherwise, if onerror is set, it is called to handle the error with arguments (func, path, exc_info) where func is platform and implementation dependent; path is the argument to that function that caused it to fail; and exc_info is a tuple returned by sys.exc_info(). If ignore_errors is false and onerror is None, an exception is raised.

rmtree_p()

Like rmtree(), but does not raise an exception if the directory does not exist.

samefile(other)

See also

os.path.samefile()

set_atime(value)
set_mtime(value)
property size

Size of the file, in bytes.

See also

getsize(), os.path.getsize()

special = functools.partial(<class 'path.SpecialResolver'>, <class 'path.Path'>)
splitall()

Return a list of the path components in this path.

The first item in the list will be a Path. Its value will be either os.curdir, os.pardir, empty, or the root directory of this path (for example, '/' or 'C:\\'). The other items in the list will be strings.

Path.joinpath(*result) will yield the original path.

>>> Path('/foo/bar/baz').splitall()
[Path('/'), 'foo', 'bar', 'baz']
splitdrive()

Return two-tuple of .drive and rest without drive.

Split the drive specifier from this path. If there is no drive specifier, p.drive is empty, so the return value is simply (Path(''), p). This is always the case on Unix.

See also

os.path.splitdrive()

splitext()

Return two-tuple of .stripext() and .ext.

Split the filename extension from this path and return the two parts. Either part may be empty.

The extension is everything from '.' to the end of the last path segment. This has the property that if (a, b) == p.splitext(), then a + b == p.

See also

os.path.splitext()

splitpath()

Return two-tuple of .parent, .name.

See also

parent, name, os.path.split()

stat()

Perform a stat() system call on this path.

>>> Path('.').stat()
os.stat_result(...)

See also

lstat(), os.stat()

statvfs()

Perform a statvfs() system call on this path.

See also

os.statvfs()

property stem

The same as name(), but with one file extension stripped off.

>>> Path('/home/guido/python.tar.gz').stem
'python.tar'
stripext()

Remove one file extension from the path.

For example, Path('/home/guido/python.tar.gz').stripext() returns Path('/home/guido/python.tar').

Create a symbolic link at newlink, pointing here.

If newlink is not supplied, the symbolic link will assume the name self.basename(), creating the link in the cwd.

See also

os.symlink()

text(encoding=None, errors='strict')

Legacy function to read text.

Converts all newline sequences to \n.

touch()

Set the access/modified times of this file to the current time. Create the file if it does not exist.

See also

os.remove()

Like remove(), but does not raise an exception if the file does not exist.

classmethod using_module(module)
utime(*args, **kwargs)

Set the access and modified times of this file.

See also

os.utime()

walk(match=None, errors='strict')

Iterator over files and subdirs, recursively.

The iterator yields Path objects naming each child item of this directory and its descendants. This requires that D.isdir().

This performs a depth-first traversal of the directory tree. Each directory is returned just before all its children.

The errors= keyword argument controls behavior when an error occurs. The default is 'strict', which causes an exception. Other allowed values are 'warn' (which reports the error via warnings.warn()), and 'ignore'. errors may also be an arbitrary callable taking a msg parameter.

walkdirs(*args, **kwargs)

Iterator over subdirs, recursively.

walkfiles(*args, **kwargs)

Iterator over files, recursively.

with_suffix(suffix)

Return a new path with the file suffix changed (or added, if none)

>>> Path('/home/guido/python.tar.gz').with_suffix(".foo")
Path('/home/guido/python.tar.foo')

>>> Path('python').with_suffix('.zip')
Path('python.zip')

>>> Path('filename.ext').with_suffix('zip')
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
ValueError: Invalid suffix 'zip'
write_bytes(bytes, append=False)

Open this file and write the given bytes to it.

Default behavior is to overwrite any existing file. Call p.write_bytes(bytes, append=True) to append instead.

write_lines(lines, encoding=None, errors='strict', linesep=_default_linesep, append=False)

Write the given lines of text to this file.

By default this overwrites any existing file at this path.

This puts a platform-specific newline sequence on every line. See linesep below.

lines - A list of strings.

encoding - A Unicode encoding to use. This applies only if

lines contains any Unicode strings.

errors - How to handle errors in Unicode encoding. This

also applies only to Unicode strings.

linesep - (deprecated) The desired line-ending. This line-ending is

applied to every line. If a line already has any standard line ending ('\r', '\n', '\r\n', u'\x85', u'\r\x85', u'\u2028'), that will be stripped off and this will be used instead. The default is os.linesep, which is platform-dependent ('\r\n' on Windows, '\n' on Unix, etc.). Specify None to write the lines as-is, like .writelines on a file object.

Use the keyword argument append=True to append lines to the file. The default is to overwrite the file.

write_text(text, encoding=None, errors='strict', linesep=os.linesep, append=False)

Write the given text to this file.

The default behavior is to overwrite any existing file; to append instead, use the append=True keyword argument.

There are two differences between write_text() and write_bytes(): newline handling and Unicode handling. See below.

Parameters:

text - str/bytes - The text to be written.

encoding - str - The text encoding used.

errors - str - How to handle Unicode encoding errors.

Default is 'strict'. See help(unicode.encode) for the options. Ignored if text isn’t a Unicode string.

linesep - keyword argument - str/unicode - The sequence of

characters to be used to mark end-of-line. The default is os.linesep. Specify None to use newlines unmodified.

append - keyword argument - bool - Specifies what to do if

the file already exists (True: append to the end of it; False: overwrite it). The default is False.

— Newline handling.

write_text() converts all standard end-of-line sequences ('\n', '\r', and '\r\n') to your platform’s default end-of-line sequence (see os.linesep; on Windows, for example, the end-of-line marker is '\r\n').

To override the platform’s default, pass the linesep= keyword argument. To preserve the newlines as-is, pass linesep=None.

This handling applies to Unicode text and bytes, except with Unicode, additional non-ASCII newlines are recognized: \x85, \r\x85, and \u2028.

— Unicode

If text isn’t Unicode, then apart from newline handling, the bytes are written verbatim to the file. The encoding and errors arguments are not used and must be omitted.

If text is Unicode, it is first converted to bytes() using the specified encoding (or the default encoding if encoding isn’t specified). The errors argument applies only to this conversion.

class path.TempDir(*args, **kwargs)

A temporary directory via tempfile.mkdtemp(), and constructed with the same parameters that you can use as a context manager.

For example:

>>> with TempDir() as d:
...     d.isdir() and isinstance(d, Path)
True

The directory is deleted automatically.

>>> d.isdir()
False

See also

tempfile.mkdtemp()

class path.masks.Permissions
>>> perms = Permissions(0o764)
>>> oct(perms)
'0o764'
>>> perms.symbolic
'rwxrw-r--'
>>> str(perms)
'rwxrw-r--'
>>> str(Permissions(0o222))
'-w--w--w-'
property bits
property symbolic
path.masks.compose(*funcs)
path.masks.compound(mode)

Support multiple, comma-separated Unix chmod symbolic modes.

>>> oct(compound('a=r,u+w')(0))
'0o644'
path.masks.gen_bit_values(number)

Return a zero or one for each bit of a numeric value up to the most significant 1 bit, beginning with the least significant bit.

>>> list(gen_bit_values(16))
[0, 0, 0, 0, 1]
path.masks.padded(iterable, fillvalue=None, n=None, next_multiple=False)

Yield the elements from iterable, followed by fillvalue, such that at least n items are emitted.

>>> list(padded([1, 2, 3], '?', 5))
[1, 2, 3, '?', '?']

If next_multiple is True, fillvalue will be emitted until the number of items emitted is a multiple of n:

>>> list(padded([1, 2, 3, 4], n=3, next_multiple=True))
[1, 2, 3, 4, None, None]

If n is None, fillvalue will be emitted indefinitely.

path.masks.simple(mode)

Convert a Unix chmod symbolic mode like 'ugo+rwx' to a function suitable for applying to a mask to affect that change.

>>> mask = simple('ugo+rwx')
>>> mask(0o554) == 0o777
True

>>> simple('go-x')(0o777) == 0o766
True

>>> simple('o-x')(0o445) == 0o444
True

>>> simple('a+x')(0) == 0o111
True

>>> simple('a=rw')(0o057) == 0o666
True

>>> simple('u=x')(0o666) == 0o166
True

>>> simple('g=')(0o157) == 0o107
True

>>> simple('gobbledeegook')
Traceback (most recent call last):
ValueError: ('Unrecognized symbolic mode', 'gobbledeegook')