Why do I have to convert my path variable to a string to convert a relative path to an absolute one? (Using Python 3.)

Question

In Python for Filesystems, in the Solid Paths, challenge, I was able to get this function to pass but only if I changed the root variable to a string.
Why?
python
def get_root():
    root = pathlib.PurePath(
        input("What's the full path where you'd like the project? ")
    )
    if not root.is_absolute():
        root = os.path.abspath(str(root))
    return root

However, if I test this on my Mac, without the conversion to an string, it works just fine.
Which is correct/best?

Michael Hulet · Accepted Answer

You probably have Python 3.6 installed on your system (which is a good thing!), but Treehouse uses Python 3.5 (at least in Workspaces, but I'd wager a guess that applies to challenges, too). In previous versions of Python, functions in the os.path module only accepted strings or bytes as parameters, but one of the changes in Python 3.6 (https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.6.html) is that these functions were updated to also accept objects from the pathlib module (https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.6.html#whatsnew36-pep519), like PurePath. Until Treehouse updates their version of Python, you must convert your pathlib objects to a string before passing them to an os.path function, but in writing real code going forward, it's better to just use your pathlib objects directly

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Stephen Cole

Stephen Cole

Why do I have to convert my path variable to a string to convert a relative path to an absolute one? (Using Python 3.)

1 Answer

Michael Hulet

Michael Hulet

Stephen Cole

Stephen Cole