Get a substring after the last occurance of a string in Python

Question

I have a string like:

test = "/home/myself/Downloads/example.py"

And I want to get the text after the last occurrence of / , which is example.py . I tried using split:

test.split("/")[0]

But the problem is that it would return the string with a fixed index, which I don't have usually.

How can I get the string after the last occurrence of /?

Answer 1

You can use str.split and get index -1 which is the last element of the list.

test = "/home/myself/Downloads/example.py"
print(test.split("/")[-1]) # 'example.py'

Although, in the specific case of recovering a filename, the answer from Ev. Kounis displays the best approach.

You can let os do it for you:

import os
test = "/home/myself/Downloads/example.py"
os.path.basename(test)  # -> example.py

Answer 2

You can let os do it for you:

import os
test = "/home/myself/Downloads/example.py"
os.path.basename(test)  # -> example.py

Answer 3

try using

test.split("/")[-1]

negative indices go backwards in lists in python so this accesses the last element

Answer 4

You can use pop method.

print(test.split("/").pop())

pop method is faster than slicing .

import timeit
t1 = timeit.Timer('test = "/home/myself/Downloads/example.py";test.split("/").pop()')
t2 = timeit.Timer('test = "/home/myself/Downloads/example.py";test.split("/")[-1]')

Output

t1 = 9.307525000622263e-07
t2 = 8.126347900179098e-06

Answer 5

If your strings are paths, you can also operate with them using pathlib :

p = Path("/home/myself/Downloads/example.py")
print(p.parts[-1])
# example.py