I recently started learning Python language and the textbook I have, while presenting the os module, explained how to use the os.name attribute in order to determine the root directory of the operative system - so, a hardcoded solution based on the if-elif-else construct.
Just for the sake of practising and start to get keen on this language, I tried to generalise this solution.
I used the os.path.split() function, knowing that splitting the root directory root_dir returns the tuple (root_dir, ''), where the first element is the root directory and the second is the empty string.
Here, I used a support variable my_tuple, initialised to (os.getcwd(), None), which is updated via the use of split() function in a while loop until its second element is ''.
my_tuple = (os.getcwd(), None)
while my_tuple[1] != '':
my_tuple = os.path.split(my_tuple[0])
root_dir = my_tuple[0]
Clearly, this is a clumsy solution, for which reason I was wondering if there's a cleaner - and a more Pythonic - way to achieve the goal.
For example, if one imports the pathlib module, they may use the PurePath.root attribute, easy peasy.
Is something similar possible with os module?
The comment to your post contains the solution you're asking for, but I'll write it here for completeness. With the os-module, you can use
path = os.getcwd()
root = os.path.splitdrive(path)[0]
to have the variable root contain what you're after.