TopolearnPath handling with string concatenation breaks across operating systems; pathlib doesn't.
pathlib.Path represents a filesystem path as an object, replacing most of os.path. Join parts with the / operator: Path("data") / "raw" / "users.csv". Python picks the right separator for the operating system, so the same code works on Windows and Linux.
Pure path manipulation, with no disk access:
p.name(users.csv),p.stem(users),p.suffix(.csv),p.parentp.with_suffix(".json"),p.with_name("other.csv")p.resolve()makes it absolute;Path.home()andPath.cwd()give common anchors
Querying and changing the filesystem:
p.exists(),p.is_file(),p.is_dir(),p.stat().st_sizep.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)creates a directory tree without failing if it existsp.read_text(encoding="utf-8"),p.write_text(...),read_bytes,write_bytesfor quick whole-file I/Op.open()for streaming, used exactly like built-inopenp.unlink(missing_ok=True)deletes a file;p.rename(target)moves it
Find files with p.iterdir() (direct children), p.glob("*.csv"), and recursive p.rglob("*.py"). Python 3.12 added Path.walk(), a pathlib equivalent of os.walk. For copying and removing trees, shutil.copytree and shutil.rmtree accept Path objects.
Most standard-library and third-party functions accept any path-like object, so you rarely need str(p). Prefer accepting str | Path in your own APIs and converting once with Path(arg).
Example
from pathlib import Path
import tempfile
root = Path(tempfile.mkdtemp())
reports = root / "out" / "reports"
reports.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
for month in ["jan", "feb"]:
(reports / f"{month}.csv").write_text("id,total\n1,10\n", encoding="utf-8")
for p in sorted(reports.glob("*.csv")):
print(p.name, p.stem, p.suffix, p.stat().st_size)
# feb.csv feb .csv 14
# jan.csv jan .csv 14
target = reports / "jan.csv"
print(target.with_suffix(".json").name) # jan.json
print(target.relative_to(root)) # out/reports/jan.csv
print(len(list(root.rglob("*.csv")))) # 2Remember
- Join paths with
/; pathlib handles OS separators .name,.stem,.suffix,.parenttake paths apartglob/rglobfind files;read_text/write_textfor quick I/O
Watch out for
- Building paths with string concatenation and hard-coded
/or\.