How to Get File Name from a Path in Python

The short answer: use pathlib. Path("/home/ana/report.pdf").name gives you report.pdf, and .stem gives you report without the extension. If you are working in older code, os.path.basename() does the same job. Everything below is the detail around those two lines — the edge cases, the Windows quirks, and why you should stop using string splitting for this.

The modern way: pathlib#

from pathlib import Path

p = Path("/home/ana/documents/report.pdf")

print(p.name)     # report.pdf
print(p.stem)     # report
print(p.suffix)   # .pdf
print(p.parent)   # /home/ana/documents

Four attributes, no function calls, no imports beyond pathlib. This works identically on Windows, macOS and Linux:

p = Path(r"C:\Users\ana\Documents\report.pdf")
print(p.name)   # report.pdf
print(p.stem)   # report

The r prefix makes it a raw string so the backslashes are not treated as escape characters.

The older way: os.path#

Plenty of existing code uses os.path, and it is still perfectly correct:

import os

path = "/home/ana/documents/report.pdf"

print(os.path.basename(path))                        # report.pdf
print(os.path.dirname(path))                         # /home/ana/documents
print(os.path.splitext(os.path.basename(path))[0])   # report
print(os.path.splitext(path)[1])                     # .pdf

Getting the name without the extension takes two nested calls, which is the main reason pathlib reads better. os.path.splitext returns a tuple of everything before the dot and the extension, so index 0 is the stem and index 1 is the suffix.

What not to do#

path = "/home/ana/report.pdf"
name = path.split("/")[-1]     # works here, fails on Windows

This is the answer people reach for first and it is a genuine bug on Windows, where paths use backslashes:

path = r"C:\Users\ana\report.pdf"
print(path.split("/")[-1])
# C:\Users\ana\report.pdf   - the whole path, unchanged

There was no forward slash to split on, so the “last piece” is the entire string. The code does not crash; it silently produces the wrong answer, which is worse. Use Path or os.path.basename and the platform difference disappears.

Files with more than one extension#

archive.tar.gz is the classic case:

p = Path("backups/archive.tar.gz")

print(p.name)      # archive.tar.gz
print(p.stem)      # archive.tar     <- only strips the last suffix
print(p.suffix)    # .gz
print(p.suffixes)  # ['.tar', '.gz']

.stem removes one extension at a time. To strip all of them:

def full_stem(path):
    p = Path(path)
    name = p.name
    for suffix in p.suffixes:
        if name.endswith(suffix):
            name = name[: -len(suffix)]
    return name


print(full_stem("backups/archive.tar.gz"))   # archive

Be careful with this on files like report.2024.01.pdf, where suffixes returns three entries and stripping them all leaves just report. Whether that is right depends entirely on your data.

Getting the name from a URL#

A URL is not a file path — it can carry a query string and a fragment, and Path will happily include them in the name. Parse it properly:

from urllib.parse import urlparse, unquote
from pathlib import PurePosixPath

url = "https://example.com/files/annual%20report.pdf?v=3#page2"

name = PurePosixPath(unquote(urlparse(url).path)).name
print(name)   # annual report.pdf

urlparse discards the query and fragment, unquote turns %20 back into a space, and PurePosixPath is used because URLs always use forward slashes regardless of which operating system you are running on.

Listing names in a folder#

from pathlib import Path

folder = Path("documents")

for item in folder.iterdir():
    if item.is_file():
        print(item.name)

# only PDFs, including subfolders
pdf_names = [p.name for p in folder.rglob("*.pdf")]

# names without extensions, sorted
stems = sorted(p.stem for p in folder.glob("*.csv"))

Quick reference#

Where to go next#

• Python file handling — reading and writing the files you have just located.
• Build a Python file organiser — a project that uses .suffix and .stem on every file in a folder.
• Python try/except explained — for the moment a path does not exist after all.