Check whether or not directory is in path

Question

I'm trying to write a Python function to accomplish the following: given a path and directory, return True only if directory appears somewhere in path.

For example consider the following example:

path = 'Documents/Pictures/random/old/test_image.jpg'
dir = 'random'

This should return True, since the directory random/ occurs somewhere along the path. On the other hand, the following example should return False:

path = 'Documents/Pictures/random_pictures/old/test_image.jpg'
dir = 'random`

This is because the directory random/ does not appear in the path, random_pictures/ does.

Is there a smarter way to do this than simply doing something like this:

def is_in_directory(path, dir):
    return '/{0}/'.format(dir) in path

Perhaps with an os or os.path module?

Answer 1

You can use os.path.split to get the directory path then split them and check for existence :

>>> dir = 'random'
>>> dir in os.path.split(path)[0].split('/')
True

And as @LittleQ suggested as a better way you can split your base path with os.path.sep

>>> dir in os.path.split(path)[0].split(s.path.sep)
True

Answer 2

split using os.path.sep os.path.dirname :

from os.path import sep,dirname
def is_in_directory(p, d):
    return d in dirname(p).split(sep)

os.path.dirname(path)¶

Return the directory name of pathname path. This is the first element of the pair returned by passing path to the function split().