The os Module

Introduction#

This module provides a portable way of using operating system dependent functionality.

Parameter	Details
Path	A path to a file. The path separator may be determined by `os.path.sep`.
Mode	The desired permission, in octal (e.g. `0700`)
## Create a directory

os.mkdir('newdir')

If you need to specify permissions, you can use the optional mode argument:

os.mkdir('newdir', mode=0700)

Use the os.getcwd() function:

print(os.getcwd())

The os module provides an interface to determine what type of operating system the code is currently running on.

os.name

This can return one of the following in Python 3:

More detailed information can be retrieved from sys.platform

Remove the directory at path:

os.rmdir(path)

You should not use os.remove() to remove a directory. That function is for files and using it on directories will result in an OSError

Sometimes you need to determine the target of a symlink. os.readlink will do this:

print(os.readlink(path_to_symlink))

os.chmod(path, mode)

where mode is the desired permission, in octal.