With PEP 562, the name __dir__ is off limits for this.

Cody

On Sun, May 6, 2018, 1:54 AM Yuval Greenfield <ubershmekel@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Ideas,

I often need to reference a script's current directory. I end up writing:

import os

SRC_DIR = os.path.dirname(__file__)

But I would prefer to have a new dunder for that. I propose: "__dir__".  I was wondering if others would find it convenient to include such a shortcut. 

Here are some examples of dirname(__file__) in prominent projects.

https://github.com/tensorflow/models/search?l=Python&q=dirname&type=

https://github.com/django/django/search?l=Python&q=dirname&type=

https://github.com/nose-devs/nose/search?l=Python&q=dirname&type=

Reasons not to add __dir__:

* There already is one way to do it and it's clear and fairly short.

* Avoid the bikeshed discussion of __dir__, __folder__, and other candidates.

Reasons to add it:

* os.path.dirname(__file__) returns the empty string when you're in the same directory as the script. Luckily, os.path.join understands an empty string as a ".", but this still is suboptimal for logging where it might be surprising to find the empty string. __dir__ could be implemented to contain a "." in that case.

* I would save about 20 characters and a line from 50% of my python scripts.

* This is such a common construct that everyone giving it their own name seems suboptimal for communicating. Common names include: here, path, dirname, module_dir.

Cheers,

Yuval Greenfield

P.s. nodejs has it - https://nodejs.org/docs/latest/api/modules.html#modules_dirname also I apologize if this has been suggested before - my googling didn't find a previous thread.

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