h5py IOError: unable to open file

Question

For some strange reason, h5py is unable to find an input file. It consistently throws this error unless the input file is in the same directory as the module that's attempting to open the file. This is strange because it used to work fine a while back:

infile = h5py.File("~/Dropbox/premalstuff/r/data/daily-mrgshrgpd.h5",'r')

and an excerpt from the IOError:

IOError: Unable to open file (Unable to open file: name = '~/dropbox/premalstuff/r/data/daily-mrgshrgpd.h5', errno = 2, error message = 'no such file or directory', flags = 0, o_flags = 0) 

Directory listing from the relevant directory:

I see that h5py changes "Dropbox" to "dropbox" ...but why? Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

if you want to use ~/ path, use os.path.expanduser()

import os

your_path=os.path.expanduser('~/Dropbox/premalstuff/r/data/daily-mrgshrgpd.h5')
infile = h5py.File(your_path,'r')

Or use absolute path.