Core Path Operations

Path Concatenation

Use the / operator for path joining: path / 'subdirectory'. Initialize paths directly: Path("dir1", "dir2", "filename.txt").

Path Format Conversion

Convert to POSIX-style string: path_obj.as_posix().

Working Directory Management

Current Directory Inspection

import os
print(os.getcwd())

Directory Modification

Change working directory: os.chdir(target_path).

Script Directory Retrieval

Using pathlib:

from pathlib import Path
script_dir = Path(__file__).parent

Using os module:

import os
script_dir = os.path.dirname(__file__)

Set working directory to script's parent:

os.chdir(os.path.dirname(__file__))

String Path Manipulations

Path Joining and Name Extraction

Append components: path_obj.joinpath('new_element'). Extract final component: path_obj.name.

Windows Path Notation

Use raw strings for Windows paths:

win_path = r"C:\Users\Example\Documents\data.txt"

Directory Creation

Recursive Directory Creation

target_path.mkdir(parents=True)

Single-Level Directory Creation

os.mkdir(dir_name)

Path Information Retrieval

Absolute Path Convertion

absolute_path = os.path.abspath(path_string)

Existence Verification

from pathlib import Path
item_path = Path("/target/location")

if item_path.is_file():
    # File exists
if item_path.is_dir():
    # Directory exists
if item_path.exists():
    # Item exists

File Operations

Extension Extraction

filename, extension = os.path.splitext(file_string)

Basename Acquisition

base_name = os.path.basename(full_path)

Filename Without Extension

from pathlib import Path
name_only = Path(__file__).stem

Text File Processing

Reading lines efficiently:

with open(text_file, "r") as file_handle:
    for line_content in file_handle:
        process(line_content)

Writing multiple lines:

with open(output_file, "w") as file_handle:
    file_handle.writelines(line_collection)

JSON File Handling

Writing JSON data:

import json
with open(json_file, "w") as file_handle:
    json.dump(data_structure, file_handle)

Appending JSON data:

with open(json_file, "a") as file_handle:
    json.dump(additional_data, file_handle)

Reading JSON data:

with open(data_file, "r") as file_handle:
    loaded_data = json.load(file_handle)

Directory Management

Directory Removal

import shutil
if os.path.isdir(target_directory):
    shutil.rmtree(target_directory)

Directory Validation

assert os.path.isdir("expected/path")

Immediate Children Iteration

Using pathlib:

parent = Path(directory_path)
for child_item in parent.iterdir():
    print(child_item)

Using os module:

for item_name in os.listdir(root_directory):
    print(item_name)

Recursive Directory Traversal

for current_root, subdirs, file_names in os.walk(start_path):
    for file_name in file_names:
        print(current_root)
        print(os.path.join(current_root, file_name))

File Pattern Matching

Wildcard Patterns

• *: Matches zero or more characters
• ?: Matches exactly one character
• [a-z]: Matches any character in the specified range

Pattern Matching Implementation

import glob
matching_files = glob.glob("directory/*.extension")

Iterative Pattern Matching

glob.iglob() returns an iterator enstead of a complete list.

File Comparison

import filecmp

try:
    identical = filecmp.cmp("first.txt", "second.txt")
    if identical:
        print("Files match")
    else:
        print("Files differ")
except OSError:
    print("File access error occurred")

Temporary File Handling

The tempfile module provides temporary file creation utilities.

Archive Operations

ZIP File Extraction

import zipfile
with zipfile.ZipFile('archive.zip') as zip_archive:
    zip_archive.extractall('destination/')