[Python-ideas] os.path.argparse - optional startdir argument

[Wolfgang Maier]

Dear all,

currently, os.path.abspath(somepath) is, essentially, equivalent to

os.path.normpath(os.path.join(os.getcwd(),path)).

However, I'd find it useful, occasionally, to be able to specify a 
starting directory other than the current working directory.

One such situation is when reading a config file of an application: if 
you encounter a relative link in such a file, you'll typically want to 
transform it into an absolute path using that application's working 
directory as opposed to your own one.

My suggestion would be to add an optional startdir argument to abspath, 
which, when provided would be used instead of os.getcwd(). If startdir 
itself is not an absolute path either, it would be turned into one 
through recursion.

Currently, you have to write:

os.path.normpath(os.path.join(startdir, path))
or even
os.path.normpath(os.path.join(os.path.abspath(startdir), path))

instead of the proposed:

os.path.abspath(path, startdir)

Before posting I checked the bug tracker and found that this idea has 
been brought up years ago (http://bugs.python.org/issue9882), but not 
pursued further.
The patch suggested there is a bit of an oversimplification, but I have 
my own one, which I could provide if someone's interested.
For issue9882 it was suggested to bring it up on python-ideas, but to 
the best of my knowledge that was never done, so I'm doing it now.

Thoughts ?

Wolfgang