Relative path referencing error

[mlefleur]

I'm having this problem with Python (I havn't tried this with different languages). When referring to another file inside the source and running the script, there is an error where the file cannot be found. It seems to be that the program is looking for the file in relation to the base directory you are working from in Atom rather than in relation to the location of the source file.

e.g. We have:

• base\src\main.py
• base\img\image.png

Inside main.py we want to load an image, so you would think that we could refer to the image as "..\img\image.png". But because we are in the base directory in Atom, this causes an error. This isn't due to an error in the code from the Python script.

Ways around problem:

• Change the Atom working directory to be the same as the source file (so in the example above, we would change the working directory to src)
• Refer to the image in relation to the current working directory (definitely not recommended, since this is an error in coding)
• Refer to the image using its full path (also not recommended since the path will likely change when distributed)

[erran]

@MykonBlu Is this with or without using the Current Working Directory option? Setting this option will set the cwd before running your script.

[erran]

This isn't due to an error in the code from the Python script.

@MykonBlu While I don't think this is an error per say, I think it could very well be a base path problem.

• What does running python src/main.py from base/ in your terminal give you?
• What does running python src/main.py from the folder atom is opened for in your terminal give you?

In Ruby I know one common idiom to ensure the path is not relative is to expand the path using the current file.

relative_path = '../../my_file.txt'

# This throws an error if you're not in the base directory
File.open(relative_path)

# NOTE: `__FILE__` refers to the absolute path to the current file
absolute_path = File.expand_path('../../Gemfile', __FILE__)

# This will always pass
File.open(absolute_path)

[erran]

via @caleb531:

I just wanted to let you know that I discovered a simple and straightforward way to ensure correct file paths within my existing Python scripts:

import os
os.chdir(os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__)))

[FabianInostroza]

Where is the "Current Working Directory" option?

[yafengguo]

This is actually related to how ATOM get current working directory for python script. A quick solution is, don't open atom from launch pad or dock, but open it from shell, from where your project/directory located.