Golang : Get current file path of a file or executable

Getting a file path in Golang is not that straight forward with just a single function call. In this tutorial, we will learn how to get the current file path of a file with filepath.Abs.

getfilepath.go

 package main

 import (
 "fmt"
 "log"
 "os"
 "path/filepath"
 )

 func main () {

 filename := os.Args[1] // get command line first parameter

 filedirectory := filepath.Dir(filename)

 thepath, err := filepath.Abs(filedirectory)

 if err != nil {
 log.Fatal(err)
 }

 fmt.Println(thepath)
 }

Executing > go run getfilepath.go somefile will return the current path of the somefile

For finding out the executable file path. In most cases, os.Getwd should do the job.

You can use the above code as well to find the current path of the executing program. Just change the line

filename := os.Args[1] // get command line first parameter

to

filename := os.Args[0] // use own filename

Hope this tutorial can be useful to you.

References :

http://golang.org/pkg/path/filepath/

http://andrewbrookins.com/tech/golang-get-directory-of-the-current-file/