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Comments on How is this code "dividing" by a string?

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How is this code "dividing" by a string?

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I found a strange expression in some Python code:

from library import HOME_DIRECTORY

file = HOME_DIRECTORY / "file.json"

It seems to be dividing a string by another string in order to do something with files.

However, I can't make this work in the REPL with my own strings:

>>> "one" / "two"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for /: 'str' and 'str'

What is the code actually doing? Even if it didn't cause an error, I can't guess what dividing strings would mean, or why it would be useful.

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2 comment threads

Classes can overload operators. One example is the [`Path` class from `pathlib` module](https://docs.... (1 comment)
What type is HOME_DIRECTORY? (1 comment)
What type is HOME_DIRECTORY?
Michael‭ wrote 6 months ago

Are you sure HOME_DIRECTORY is a string? It could be a class where the / operator is set up to do something cute with __truediv__(). If I had to guess, it's probably returning that same object type, but with the second operand appended to the path.