How to handle paths and working directory in Python

Question

I have the following folder structure:

 - Project
      - Main Folder
          - Module.py
      - Other Folders
          - blah.py

Launching the following code from the module Module.py provides two ways to get the working directory and it seems that they are equivalent:

pathlib.Path(__file__).parent.resolve()

pathlib.Path.cwd()

What are the differences (pros & cons) in using one way over the other?

Answer 1

Surprisingly they are pretty much the same.

If you check the source code of pathlib. You can see pathlib.Path.cwd() just returns os.

    def cwd(cls):
        """Return a new path pointing to the current working directory
        (as returned by os.getcwd()).
        """
        return cls(os.getcwd())

And pathlib.Path(__file__).parent.resolve() the same with some additional validations.

    def resolve(self, path, strict=False):
        s = str(path)
        if not s:
            return os.getcwd()
        previous_s = None
        if _getfinalpathname is not None:
            if strict:
                return self._ext_to_normal(_getfinalpathname(s))
            else:
                tail_parts = []  # End of the path after the first one not found
                while True:
                    try:
                        s = self._ext_to_normal(_getfinalpathname(s))
                    except FileNotFoundError:
                        previous_s = s
                        s, tail = os.path.split(s)
                        tail_parts.append(tail)
                        if previous_s == s:
                            return path
                    else:
                        return os.path.join(s, *reversed(tail_parts))
        # Means fallback on absolute
        return None