Message 320493 - Python tracker (original) (raw)

This is an interesting behavior to note. I think the current behavior makes the most sense, as it corresponds to the OS-level errors that you get from running the same operations.

Interestingly, at least on Unix-based file systems, we get different error messages but the same behavior when using "" vs "." as our target:

[linux]$ mkdir "" mkdir: cannot create directory ‘’: No such file or directory [linux]$ mkdir . mkdir: cannot create directory ‘.’: File exists

[mac]$ mkdir "" mkdir: .: No such file or directory [mac]$ mkdir . mkdir: .: File exists

Both os.mkdir and os.makedirs follow (only os.mkdir is included as the traceback is cleaner, but they raise the same errors):

os.mkdir("") Traceback (most recent call last): File "", line 1, in FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '' os.mkdir(".") Traceback (most recent call last): File "", line 1, in FileExistsError: [Errno 17] File exists: '.'

Since on an OS level the only time "File exists" is returned is when using "." and not "", os.makedirs with exists_ok=True also follows:

os.makedirs("", exist_ok=True) Traceback (most recent call last): File "", line 1, in File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/3.6.5/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6/os.py", line 220, in makedirs mkdir(name, mode) FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '' os.makedirs(".", exist_ok=True)

Basically, the FileExistsError gets silenced, but FileNotFoundError is left alone. I can see how the differences are nuanced and not obvious though.

Unless you think there is a succinct and worthwhile way of adding this to the documentation, I think this issue can be closed.