[Tutor] How to replace the '\'s in a path with '/'s?

[Peter Otten]

Sandip Bhattacharya wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 10:28:11PM -0700, Richard D. Moores wrote:
>> File "c:\P32Working\untitled-5.py", line 2
>>    return path.replace('\', '/')
>>                                ^
>> SyntaxError: EOL while scanning string literal
>> Process terminated with an exit code of 1
> 
> The first backslash up there is escaping the ending quote. This is  what
> you want:
>     return path.replace('\\', '/')
> 
> Generally, converting slashes manually should be kept at a minimum. You
> should be using library functions as much as possible. The experts here
> can correct me here, but this is a roundabout way I would be doing this:
> 
>     # I use a linux machine. Using this to work with Windows paths
>     # Use os.path if you are on windows
>     import ntpath
> 
>     # Use raw strings so that backslash doesnt matter
>     path=r'C:\Users\Dick\Desktop\Documents\Notes\College Notes.rtf'
> 
>     #take out drive first because ntpath.split end sentinel is predictable
>     #that way
>     drive,rest = ntpath.splitdrive(path)
> 
>     # This will store the path components
>     comps = []
>     comps.append(drive)
> 
>     while rest != '\\':
>         parts = ntpath.split(rest)
>         comps.insert(1,parts[1])
>         rest = parts[0]
> 
> 
>     print '/'.join(comps)
> 
> I am not happy with the loop to collect the components. But I couldn't
> find a single path function which splits a path into all the components
> in one go.

What happens if the path looks like 

r"C:relative\path\to\my\file.txt"

or

r"C:/mixed\slashes.txt"?