Pythonic path splitting. Style, and best practice

Question

I have a working module, I am trying to put toghet a unified yaml file at the ROOT directory, for all sub modules to use.

I have a sub module that is 3 levels deep, and the configs.yaml is at the root.

right now I am accessing the root directory by hardcoding os.path.split() lines for as many levels as necessay, and I was wondering if there is a more pythonic, or a better more robust way of pointing to directory top.

I am on windows. Python 3.4, using py2exe for building.

The folder structure is as follows .

• dps_tools

  • nydps

    • edit
      • db
        • session.py

  • winsrv64

    • editservice.py

and more

session.py segment

 if hasattr(sys, 'frozen'):
    current_directory =  os.path.split(sys.executable)[0]
else:
   current_directory = os.path.split(os.path.split(os.path.split(os.path.dirname(
    os.path.abspath("__file__")))[0])[0])[0]

editservice.py

if hasattr(sys, 'frozen'):
    basis = sys.executable
else:
    basis = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath("__file__"))

current_directory = os.path.split(basis)[0]

Is there a more consistent approach? Or perhaps a oneline pythonic way to access directory top? (even though I am on windows and directory top is not c:)

Answer 1

First, note that os.path.dirname(filepath) is equivalent to os.path.split(filepath)[0].

But if you need to go several levels up, I'd use os.path.normpath(os.path.join(filepath, '..', '..', '..')). IMHO it's more readable.

EDIT: ntpath's normpath will also replace / with \\ in the input path, so the line above can be re-written to os.path.normpath(os.path.join(filepath, '../../..')), and it's be portable.