Get File Extension in Python

Python – Get File Extension

To get file extension in Python, you can use the os.path module to get the extension of a file. Call os.path.splitext() function and pass the file path as argument to the function. The function returns the root, and extension as a tuple.

The syntax to call os.path.splitext() function to get the extension of a file at file_path location is

import os

_, extension = os.path.splitext(file_path)

Example

In the following program, we will get the extension of the file data.txt programmatically using os.path.splitext() function.

File

import os

file_path = 'myfolder/data.txt'
_, file_extension = os.path.splitext(file_path)
print(file_extension)

Output

.txt

If there is no extension to the file, then splitext() returns an empty string, as shown in the following example.

import os

file_path = 'myfolder/data'
_, file_extension = os.path.splitext(file_path)
print(file_extension)

Output

Summary

In this tutorial of Python Examples, we learned how to get the extension of a file using os.path.splitext() function, with the help of examples.