filenames.md

Manipulating Filenames

The following functions can be used to manipulate filenames in a portable way over multiple platforms.

paths.filep(path)

Return a boolean indicating whether path refers to an existing file.

paths.dirp(path)

Return a boolean indicating whether path refers to an existing directory.

paths.basename(path,[suffix])

Return the last path component of path and optionally strip the suffix suffix. This is similar to the well know shell command "basename".

paths.dirname(path)

Return the name of directory containing file path. This is similar to the well known shell command "dirname".

paths.extname(path)

Return the extension of the path or nil if none is found.

paths.concat([path1,....,pathn])

Concatenates relative filenames.

First this function computes the full filename of path1 relative to the current directory. Then it successively computes the full filenames of arguments path2 to pathn relative to the filename returned for the previous argument. Finally the last result is returned.

Calling this function without argument returns the full name of the current directory.

paths.cwd()

Return the full path of the current working directory.

paths.execdir()

Return the name of the directory containing the current Lua executable. When the module paths is first loaded, this information is used to relocate the variables indicating the location of the various Torch components.

paths.tmpname()

Return the name of a temporary file. All the temporaty files whose name was obtained in this way are removed when Lua exits.

This function should be preferred over os.tmpname() because it makes sure that the files are removed on exit. In addition, os.tmpname() under windows often returns filenames for which the user has no permission to write.