Module path

Cross-platform path manipulation.

This module provides two types, PathBuf and Path (akin to String and str), for working with paths abstractly. These types are thin wrappers around OsString and OsStr respectively, meaning that they work directly on strings according to the local platform’s path syntax.

Paths can be parsed into Components by iterating over the structure returned by the components method on Path. Components roughly correspond to the substrings between path separators (/ or \). You can reconstruct an equivalent path from components with the push method on PathBuf; note that the paths may differ syntactically by the normalization described in the documentation for the components method.

Case sensitivity

Unless otherwise indicated path methods that do not access the filesystem, such as Path::starts_with and Path::ends_with, are case sensitive no matter the platform or filesystem. An exception to this is made for Windows drive letters.

Simple usage

Path manipulation includes both parsing components from slices and building new owned paths.

To parse a path, you can create a Path slice from a str slice and start asking questions:

use std::path::Path;
use std::ffi::OsStr;

let path = Path::new("/tmp/foo/bar.txt");

let parent = path.parent();
assert_eq!(parent, Some(Path::new("/tmp/foo")));

let file_stem = path.file_stem();
assert_eq!(file_stem, Some(OsStr::new("bar")));

let extension = path.extension();
assert_eq!(extension, Some(OsStr::new("txt")));

To build or modify paths, use PathBuf:

use std::path::PathBuf;

// This way works...
let mut path = PathBuf::from("c:\\");

path.push("windows");
path.push("system32");

path.set_extension("dll");

// ... but push is best used if you don't know everything up
// front. If you do, this way is better:
let path: PathBuf = ["c:\\", "windows", "system32.dll"].iter().collect();

Structs

Ancestors

An iterator over Path and its ancestors.

Components

An iterator over the Components of a Path.

Display

Helper struct for safely printing paths with format! and {}.

Iter

An iterator over the Components of a Path, as OsStr slices.

Path

A slice of a path (akin to str).

PathBuf

An owned, mutable path (akin to String).

PrefixComponent

A structure wrapping a Windows path prefix as well as its unparsed string representation.

StripPrefixError

An error returned from Path::strip_prefix if the prefix was not found.

NormalizeErrorExperimental

An error returned from Path::normalize_lexically if a .. parent reference would escape the path.

Enums

Component

A single component of a path.

Prefix

Windows path prefixes, e.g., C: or \\server\share.

Constants

MAIN_SEPARATOR

The primary separator of path components for the current platform.

MAIN_SEPARATOR_STR

The primary separator of path components for the current platform.

Functions

absolute

Makes the path absolute without accessing the filesystem.

is_separator

Determines whether the character is one of the permitted path separators for the current platform.