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I've been using Jason Jorendorff's path module lately in a couple command-line scripts. A while ago I stopped writing many scripts in shell, since I always found it hard to grow the scripts, and the quoting always causes problems. How many shell scripts can deal with filenames with spaces in them? Shell scripting is a crappy language. I always thought Tcl would make a good shell -- both simpler and more reliable than shell, but just as string-oriented. But it never seemed to happen... so it goes.

Anyway, when writing command-line programs you do lots of file operations, and typically use os.path a lot. os.path is a pain to use -- too much os.path.join(os.path.dirname(...)) and the like. This makes Python rather painful to use.

Despite wanting a path module for a long time, I keep forgetting to use the one I have (standard or no). After using it some, I find it very pleasant. Besides avoiding os.path, I get nice functions like text() and write_text() which read and write text to the file in a single chunk, no open() required. And I'm sure there's more good stuff in there that I haven't assimilated yet either.

There's an outstanding (pre) PEP, and a second discussion on comp.lang.python surrounding a path module. Personally Jason's module fits me well, and I think it's worth the time to learn even if you've become accustomed (as I have) to os.path.

(And I like the use of / for os.path.join -- purists say that it's not division, but I say who cares; % substitution isn't modulo either)