>>> import os
>>> os.path.abspath("mydir/myfile.txt")
'C:/example/cwd/mydir/myfile.txt'
Also works if it is already an absolute path:
>>> import os
>>> os.path.abspath("C:/example/cwd/mydir/myfile.txt")
'C:/example/cwd/mydir/myfile.txt'
On Python ≥ 3.5, use pathlib.Path.mkdir:
from pathlib import Path
Path("/my/directory").mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)
For older versions of Python, I see two answers with good qualities, each with a small flaw, so I will give my take on it:
Try os.path.exists, and consider os.makedirs for the creation.
import os
if not os.path.exists(directory):
os.makedirs(directory)
As noted in comments and elsewhere, there's a race condition – if the directory is created between the os.path.exists and the os.makedirs calls, the os.makedirs will fail with an OSError. Unfortunately, blanket-catching OSError and continuing is not foolproof, as it will ignore a failure to create the directory due to other factors, such as insufficient permissions, full disk, etc.
One option would be to trap the OSError and examine the embedded error code (see Is there a cross-platform way of getting information from Python’s OSError):
import os, errno
try:
os.makedirs(directory)
except OSError as e:
if e.errno != errno.EEXIST:
raise
Alternatively, there could be a second os.path.exists, but suppose another created the directory after the first check, then removed it before the second one – we could still be fooled.
Depending on the application, the danger of concurrent operations may be more or less than the danger posed by other factors such as file permissions. The developer would have to know more about the particular application being developed and its expected environment before choosing an implementation.
Modern versions of Python improve this code quite a bit, both by exposing FileExistsError (in 3.3+)...
try:
os.makedirs("path/to/directory")
except FileExistsError:
# directory already exists
pass
...and by allowing a keyword argument to os.makedirs called exist_ok (in 3.2+).
os.makedirs("path/to/directory", exist_ok=True) # succeeds even if directory exists.
Best Solution
Your shell path has nothing to do with how compiling works, the related paths are the library path (-L option on gcc) which is where the compiler looks for libraries and the include path (-I option on gcc) which is where the compiler looks for header files. Check this link out if you are using gcc.