pathlib vs os.path: Modern File Path Handling

Code using os.path for file operations is verbose, requires manual string concatenation, and is hard to read. Path manipulation with string operations is error-prone on Windows.

Use pathlib.Path for all file system operations — it is object-oriented, readable, and cross-platform.

from pathlib import Path

# Creating paths — / operator joins parts cleanly
base = Path('/data')
config = base / 'config' / 'settings.json'

# Reading and writing — no open() needed for simple cases
content = config.read_text(encoding='utf-8')
config.write_text('{}', encoding='utf-8')

# File info
config.exists()
config.is_file()
config.stat().st_size

# Parts and transformations
path = Path('/data/reports/report.csv.gz')
path.name        # 'report.csv.gz'
path.stem        # 'report.csv'
path.suffix      # '.gz'
path.parent      # Path('/data/reports')

# Globbing
for csv_file in Path('data').glob('**/*.csv'):
    print(csv_file)

# Creating directories
Path('/data/new/dir').mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)

pathlib.Path is object-oriented, cross-platform, and chainable. It replaces os.path, os.getcwd(), os.makedirs(), and file open patterns with a unified, readable API.