How to get file extension in Python?

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In Python, we can extract the file extension using two approaches. Let’s take a look at each of these with examples.

Python get file extension using os module splitext() function

The os module has extensive functions for interacting with the operating system. The OS module can be used to easily create, modify, delete, and fetch file contents or directories.

Syntax: os.path.splitext(path)

The functionsplitext() will take the path as an argument and return the tuple with filename and extension.

import os

# returns tuple wit filename and extension
file_details = os.path.splitext('/home/usr/sample.txt')
print("File Details ",file_details)

# extract the file name and extension
file_name = file_details[0]
file_extension = file_details[1]

print("File Name: ", file_name)
print("File Extension: ", file_extension)

Output

File Details ('/home/usr/sample', '.txt')
File Name: /home/usr/sample
File Extension: .txt

Python get file extension using pathlib module

pathlib module comes as a standard utility module in Python and offers classes representing filesystem paths with semantics appropriate for different operating systems.

pathlib.path().suffix method can be used to extract the extension of the given file path.

import pathlib

# pathlib function which returns the file extension
file_extension = pathlib.Path('/home/usr/sample.txt').suffix
print("The given File Extension is : ", file_extension)

Output

The given File Extension is : .txt

What if your extension is like *sample.tar.gz * with multiple dots, and if you use the above methods, you will only get the last part of the extension, not the full extension.

You can use the pathlib module with suffixes property which returns all the extensions as a list. Using that, we can join into a single string, as shown below.

import pathlib

# pathlib function which returns the file extension
file_extension = pathlib.Path('/home/usr/sample.tar.gz').suffixes
print("File extension ", file_extension)
print("The given File Extension is : ", ''.join(file_extension))

Output

File extension ['.tar', '.gz']
The given File Extension is : .tar.gz

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