Sometimes, we want to reliably open a file in the same directory as the currently running script with Python.

In this article, we’ll look at how to reliably open a file in the same directory as the currently running script with Python.

How to reliably open a file in the same directory as the currently running script with Python?

To reliably open a file in the same directory as the currently running script with Python, we can get the current folder of the script and then use open with it.

For instance, we write

__location__ = os.path.realpath(
    os.path.join(os.getcwd(), os.path.dirname(__file__)))
f = open(os.path.join(__location__, 'bundled-resource.jpg'))

to get the current location of the script with

__location__ = os.path.realpath(
    os.path.join(os.getcwd(), os.path.dirname(__file__)))

We get the current directory with getcwd.

And we get the relative path to the current script with

os.path.dirname(__file__)

Then we call os.path.realpath to get the real path from the joined path to get the path of the current directory.

Then we call open with the __location__ path we created.

Conclusion

To reliably open a file in the same directory as the currently running script with Python, we can get the current folder of the script and then use open with it.