What's the best way to add a trailing slash to a pathlib directory?

Question

I have a directory I'd like to print out with a trailing slash: my_path = pathlib.Path('abc/def')

Is there a nicer way of doing this than os.path.join(str(my_path), '')?

Answer 1

No, you didn't miss anything. By design, pathlib strips trailing slashes, and provides no way to display paths with trailing slashes. This has annoyed several people, as mentioned in the bug tracker: pathlib strips trailing slash.

A compact way to add slashes in Python 3.6 is to use an f-string, eg f'{some_path}/' or f'{some_path}{os.sep}' if you want to be OS-agnostic.

from pathlib import Path
import os

some_path = '/etc'
p = Path(some_path)
print(f'{p}/')
print(f'{p}{os.sep}')

output

/etc/
/etc/

Another option is to add a dummy component and slice it off the resulting string:

print(str(p/'@')[:-1])

Answer 2

To add a trailing slash of the path's flavour using just pathlib you could do:

>>> from pathlib import Path
>>> my_path = Path("abc/def")
>>> str(my_path / "_")[:-1]  # add a dummy "_" component, then strip it
'abc/def/'

Looking into the source, there's also a Path._flavour.sep attribute:

>>> str(my_path) + my_path._flavour.sep
'abc/def/'

But it doesn't seem to have any documented accessor yet.

Answer 3

You could also use:

os.path.normpath(str(my_path)) + os.sep

I would say it is down to preference rather than being "nicer"