calling a python module that reads a file

Question

so my program import a utils that reads a file in the same directory as the utils. However, this utils function can be called from different files from different directory.

Project
|
|-module_1: 
     |__ init __.py
     | file.py <--- calls util.load_file() 
|module_2:
     | __ init __.py 
     | utils.py <---- load_file() path used 'file.txt' 
     | file.txt

what is this thing called ? I couldn't even search for it. tried package managment, expanding path ...etc

Answer 1

__file__ contains the path to the current file. Check it with print(__file__).

pathlib from Pythons standard library can be used to construct an absolute path to the data file.

import pathlib

print(pathlib.Path(__file__))
print(pathlib.Path(__file__).parent)
print(pathlib.Path(__file__).parent / 'file.txt')

You can now open your file like this:

filepath = pathlib.Path(__file__).parent / 'file.txt'
with open(filepath) as f:
    for line in f:
        print(line)