Cross-platform way of getting temp directory in Python
I use:
from pathlib import Path
import platform
import tempfile
tempdir = Path("/tmp" if platform.system() == "Darwin" else tempfile.gettempdir())
This is because on MacOS, i.e. Darwin, tempfile.gettempdir()
and os.getenv('TMPDIR')
return a value such as '/var/folders/nj/269977hs0_96bttwj2gs_jhhp48z54/T'
; it is one that I do not always want.
That would be the tempfile module.
It has functions to get the temporary directory, and also has some shortcuts to create temporary files and directories in it, either named or unnamed.
Example:
import tempfile
print tempfile.gettempdir() # prints the current temporary directory
f = tempfile.TemporaryFile()
f.write('something on temporaryfile')
f.seek(0) # return to beginning of file
print f.read() # reads data back from the file
f.close() # temporary file is automatically deleted here
For completeness, here's how it searches for the temporary directory, according to the documentation:
- The directory named by the
TMPDIR
environment variable. - The directory named by the
TEMP
environment variable. - The directory named by the
TMP
environment variable. - A platform-specific location:
- On RiscOS, the directory named by the
Wimp$ScrapDir
environment variable. - On Windows, the directories
C:\TEMP
,C:\TMP
,\TEMP
, and\TMP
, in that order. - On all other platforms, the directories
/tmp
,/var/tmp
, and/usr/tmp
, in that order.
- On RiscOS, the directory named by the
- As a last resort, the current working directory.
This should do what you want:
print(tempfile.gettempdir())
For me on my Windows box, I get:
c:\temp
and on my Linux box I get:
/tmp