Operating System

This page documents functions that let you interact with the user’s operating system, and perform operations such as checking whether a file or directory exists, extracting parts of a file name, etc. All these functions accept and return UTF-8 paths, which are resolved correctly on Linux, macOS and Windows alike.

Functions

get_user_directory()

Get the user’s directory (read only).

get_current_directory()

Get the current directory.

set_current_directory("/home/julien/Documents")
print(get_current_directory())
set_current_directory(path as String)

Set the current directory to path.

get_full_path(relative_path as String)

Turn a relative path into an absolute path.

get_path_separator()

Get the native path separator on the current platform. This is \\ on Windows and / on other platforms.

get_os_name()

Return the name of the current platform: "windows", "macos" or "linux".

get_script_path()

Return the path of the script file whose code is currently running, so a script can locate data relative to itself. If no script file is associated with the running code (for instance in the console), an error is raised.

get_temp_directory()

Get the name of a directory where temporary files can be written.

get_temp_name()

Return the name of a temporary file which is guaranteed to be unique.

get_base_name(path as String)

Return the file name part of path, stripping all directories.

print(get_base_name("/home/hodor/test.txt")) # prints "test.txt"
get_directory(path as String)

Return the directory part of path, stripping the file name.

create_directory(path as String)

Create a new directory. If the directory could not be created, an error is thrown.

remove_directory(path as String)

Remove a directory, which must be empty. If the directory could not be removed, an error is thrown.

remove_directory(path as String, recursive as Boolean)

Remove a directory. If recursive is true, the content is removed recursively; otherwise, the directory is assumed to be empty. If the directory could not be removed, an error is thrown.

remove_file(path as String)

Remove a file. If the file could not be removed, an error is thrown.

remove_path(path as String)

Remove path, which can be either a file or a directory. If path could not be removed, an error is thrown.

list_directory(path as String)

Return a list containing the names of the files in path. Hidden files are not included.

list_directory(path as String, include_hidden as Boolean)

Return a list containing the names of the files in path. If include_hidden is true, hidden files are included. If it is false or is missing, hidden files are not included.

exists(path as String)

Return true if the path exists, false otherwise.

is_document(path as String)

Return true if path exists and is a file, false otherwise.

is_directory(path as String)

Return true if path exists and is a directory, false otherwise.

get_extension(path as String)

Get the file’s extension, starting with a dot.

get_extension(path as String, lower as Boolean)

Get the file’s extension, starting with a dot. If lower is true, the extension is converted to lower case.

strip_extension(path as String)

Return path without extension.

split_extension(path as String)

Return a list whose first element is path with the extension removed, and whose second element is the extension.

join_path(s1 as String, s2 as String)

Concatenate s1 and s2 using the native path separator and returns the resulting path name.

genericize(path as String)

On Windows, this function converts the native path separator to the generic separator /. On platforms that use the generic separator, it does nothing.

nativize(path as String)

On Windows, this function converts the generic path separator to the native separator \\. On platforms that use the generic separator, it does nothing.

rename(old_name as String, new_name as String)

Renames a file. If the file could not be renamed, an error is raised.