Hi there, thanks in advance for trying to help!
I’m currently learning Python using Eric Matthes’ “Python Crash Course”. I’m stuck at trying to read a file using pathlib.
Here’s the code in question:
PS C:\Users\aleks\Desktop\python_work> & C:/Users/aleks/AppData/Local/Programs/Python/Python311/python.exe "c:/Users/aleks/Desktop/python_work/Chapter 10/file_reader.py"
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "c:\Users\aleks\Desktop\python_work\Chapter 10\file_reader.py", line 4, in <module>
contents = path.read_text()
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "C:\Users\aleks\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python311\Lib\pathlib.py", line 1058, in read_text
with self.open(mode='r', encoding=encoding, errors=errors) as f:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "C:\Users\aleks\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python311\Lib\pathlib.py", line 1044, in open
return io.open(self, mode, buffering, encoding, errors, newline)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'pi_digits.txt'
I have already tried using Bing chatbot to help me find the problem and doing that ruled out the following possibilities:
No spelling mistakes
Code should work
The file_reader.py and pi_digits.txt files are in the same directory
The pi_digits.txt file is not hidden or has restricted access
Currently installed Python version is Python 3.11.2
Updated pip to the latest version 23.0.1 and used the command pip install pathlib to install pathlib should it not be there already
After that Bing ran out of ideas and directed me towards this forum. I hope somebody can help me, since I cannot continue programming if I can’t read files
From this you are can see that the pi_digits.txt file is not in the current directory.
I know this becuase there is no directory in the name of the file.
You can confirm this by using dir that will show your python script and will not list the pi_digits.txt file.
If you want to open the from some other directory you will need to include that in the filename.
EDIT:
I tried copying the file into the superordinate folder python_work and now the script works! However, when I type dir, I can see the pi_digits.txt file but not the file_reader.py file which is located in the Chapter_10 folder.
The parent of a process determines its initial working directory. It’s either inherited from the parent’s current working directory or set explicitly by the parent. In this case, the Python process is spawned by PowerShell with the initial working directory “C:\Users\aleks\Desktop\python_work”. In the script, Path('pi_digits.txt') tries to resolve the relative path “py_digits.txt” as a file in the current working directory.
The directory that has the “file_reader.py” script has nothing to do with resolving a relative file path, unless you manually change the current directory to that path, e.g. via os.chdir("C:/Users/aleks/Desktop/python_work/Chapter 10").
This is not what matters. A path like this is a relative path, which is relative to the current working directory of the Python process, not necessarily the source code file.
