How to get folder name, in which given file resides, from pathlib.path?

Question

Is there something similar to os.path.dirname(path), but in pathlib?

Answer 1

It looks like there is a parents element that contains all the parent directories of a given path. E.g., if you start with:

>>> import pathlib
>>> p = pathlib.Path('/path/to/my/file')

Then p.parents[0] is the directory containing file:

>>> p.parents[0]
PosixPath('/path/to/my')

...and p.parents[1] will be the next directory up:

>>> p.parents[1]
PosixPath('/path/to')

Etc.

p.parent is another way to ask for p.parents[0]. You can convert a Path into a string and get pretty much what you would expect:

>>> str(p.parent)
'/path/to/my'

And also on any Path you can use the .absolute() method to get an absolute path:

>>> os.chdir('/etc')
>>> p = pathlib.Path('../relative/path')
>>> str(p.parent)
'../relative'
>>> str(p.parent.absolute())
'/etc/../relative'

Note that os.path.dirname and pathlib treat paths with a trailing slash differently. The pathlib parent of some/path/ is some:

>>> p = pathlib.Path('some/path/')
>>> p.parent
PosixPath('some')

While os.path.dirname on some/path/ returns some/path:

>>> os.path.dirname('some/path/')
'some/path'