How to read files from Python scripts called from anywhere

user_13039797 0
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I am writing a piece of Python code, which requires reading a file from a relative position of the script itself.

This is the folder structure:

.
+-- cache
|   +-- ..
|   +-- population.json
+-- src
|   +-- ..
|   +-- script.py
+-- ..

I tried something like this:

folder = os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath("__file__"))
path = os.path.join(folder, "..{0}cache{1}population.json".format(os.path.sep, os.path.sep))
with open(path) as f:
    population = load(f)

The problem is that folder is always set to the current folder which I am calling the script from.

So how can I fix it, in order to read the files independently of where I call the script from?

python
1 Answers

The problem is that you are basing the operation off of the literal string "__file__", which python assumes to be the name of a file in the current working directory. You want to use __file__, the variable holding the name of the script.

Its a bit odd to mix os.path and hand-crafted paths. But things like os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(...)) get tedious fast. An alternative is the more compact pathlib

from path lib import Path
path = Path(__file__).absolute().parents[1].joinpath('cache', 'population.json')

But that's just an FYI.

user_6420700
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