Operating System

This page documents the system module.

General concepts

This module lets you interact with the operating system, and perform operations such as checking whether a file or directory exists, extracting parts of a file name, etc.

Functions

system.get_application_directory()

Returns the path of the directory (inside the user’s directory) where application settings are usually written to.

system.user_directory

Get the user’s directory (read only).

system.current_directory

Get or set the current directory.

system.current_directory = "/home/julien/Documents"
print(system.current_directory)
system.get_full_path(relative_path)

Turns a relative path into an absolute path.

system.separator

Get the native path separator on the current platform. This is \\ on Windows and / on other platforms.

system.temp_directory

Get the name of a directory where temporary files can be written.

system.get_temp_name()

Returns the name of a temporary file which is guaranteed to be unique.

system.get_base_name(path)

Returns the file name part of path, stripping all directories.

print(os.get_base_name("/home/hodor/test.txt")) -- prints "test.txt"
system.create_directory(path)

Create a new directory. If the directory could not be created, an error is thrown.

system.remove_directory(path)

Recursively remove a directory. If the directory could not be removed, an error is thrown.

system.remove_file(path)

Remove a file. If the file could not be removed, an error is thrown.

system.remove(path)

Remove path, which can be either a file or a directory. If path could not be removed, an error is thrown.

system.list_directory(path[, include_hidden])

Returns a table containing the files in path. If include_hidden is true, hidden files are included. If it is false or is missing, hidden files are not included.

system.exists(path)

Returns true if the path exists, false otherwise.

system.is_file(path)

Returns true if path exists and is a file, false otherwise.

system.is_directory(path)

Returns true if path exists and is a directory, false otherwise.

system.clear_directory(path)

Empty the content of a directory.

system.get_extension(path)

Get the file’s extension, starting with a dot.

system.strip_extension(path)

Returns path without extension.

system.split_extension(path)

Returns a table whose first element is path with the extension removed, and whose second element is the extension.

system.build_path(...)

Concatenate the arguments using the native path separator and returns the resulting path name.

system.genericize(path)

On Windows, this function converts the native path separator to the generic separator``”/”. On platforms that use the generic separator, it does nothing.

system.nativize(path)

On Windows, this function converts the generic path separator to the native separator``”". On platforms that use the generic separator, it does nothing.

system.rename(old_name, new_name)

Renames a file. If the file could not be renamed, an error is raised.