An existing file not being identified using os.path.isfile function
Question:
I have a file 7.csv in directory: '~/Documents/Jane/analyst/test/1/'. I was able to read this file using pandas.read_csv function with no problem.
f_path = '~/Documents/Jane/analyst/test/1/7.csv'
pd.read_csv(f_path, index_col=None, header=0)
But when checking whether this file is exsiting using os.path.isfile(), the result return False.
os.path.isfile(f_path)
False
What could be the the possible error source?
Answers:
Both os.path.isfile() and os.path.exists() do not recognize ~ as the home directory. ~ is a shell variable not recognized in python. It has to be either fully specified or you can use relative directory name.
But if you want to use ~ as home, you can do
from os.path import expanduser
home = expanduser("~")
As hun mentioned, your code should be
import os
f_path = '~/Documents/Jane/analyst/test/1/7.csv'
os.path.isfile(os.path.expanduser(f_path))
This will expand the tilde into an absolute path. ~, . and .. do not have the same meaning to the python os package that they do in a unix shell and need to be interpreted by separate functions.
I came across this error with os.path.isfile not detecting a path which was captured from running a shell command with subprocess (which added a n to the end of the path string)
I detected this error by running shutil.move(file_path, new_path) without first checking if the source file existed with os.path.isfile
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/stuart/devops/distrobuilder/build/alpinelinux-3.16-x86_64-default-20220814_1848.tar.xzn'
This sort of error is not apparent at first glance unless you are specifically looking for an extra new line when you print(file_path)
The solution in cases like this is to use strip() – in my case specifically on the command:
output = subprocess.check_output(cmd, shell=True, text=True).strip()
I have a file 7.csv in directory: '~/Documents/Jane/analyst/test/1/'. I was able to read this file using pandas.read_csv function with no problem.
f_path = '~/Documents/Jane/analyst/test/1/7.csv'
pd.read_csv(f_path, index_col=None, header=0)
But when checking whether this file is exsiting using os.path.isfile(), the result return False.
os.path.isfile(f_path)
False
What could be the the possible error source?
Both os.path.isfile() and os.path.exists() do not recognize ~ as the home directory. ~ is a shell variable not recognized in python. It has to be either fully specified or you can use relative directory name.
But if you want to use ~ as home, you can do
from os.path import expanduser
home = expanduser("~")
As hun mentioned, your code should be
import os
f_path = '~/Documents/Jane/analyst/test/1/7.csv'
os.path.isfile(os.path.expanduser(f_path))
This will expand the tilde into an absolute path. ~, . and .. do not have the same meaning to the python os package that they do in a unix shell and need to be interpreted by separate functions.
I came across this error with os.path.isfile not detecting a path which was captured from running a shell command with subprocess (which added a n to the end of the path string)
I detected this error by running shutil.move(file_path, new_path) without first checking if the source file existed with os.path.isfile
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/stuart/devops/distrobuilder/build/alpinelinux-3.16-x86_64-default-20220814_1848.tar.xzn'
This sort of error is not apparent at first glance unless you are specifically looking for an extra new line when you print(file_path)
The solution in cases like this is to use strip() – in my case specifically on the command:
output = subprocess.check_output(cmd, shell=True, text=True).strip()