Using absolute unix paths in windows with python

Use os.path.abspath(), and also os.path.expanduser() for files relative to the user’s home directory:

print os.path.abspath("/var/lib/blob_files/myfile.blob")
>>> C:\var\lib\blob_files\myfile.blob

print os.path.abspath(os.path.expanduser("~/blob_files/myfile.blob"))
>>> C:\Users\jerry\blob_files\myfile.blob

These will “do the right thing” for both Windows and POSIX paths.

expanduser() won’t change the path if it doesn’t have a ~ in it, so you can safely use it with all paths. Thus, you can easily write a wrapper function:

import os
def fixpath(path):
    return os.path.abspath(os.path.expanduser(path))

Note that the drive letter used will be the drive specified by the current working directory of the Python process, usually the directory your script is in (if launching from Windows Explorer, and assuming your script doesn’t change it). If you want to force it to always be C: you can do something like this:

import os
def fixpath(path):
    path = os.path.normpath(os.path.expanduser(path))
    if path.startswith("\\"): return "C:" + path
    return path