Relative paths are relative to current working directory.
If you do not want your path to be relative, it must be absolute.
But there is an often used trick to build an absolute path from current script: use its __file__
special attribute:
from pathlib import Path
path = Path(__file__).parent / "../data/test.csv"
with path.open() as f:
test = list(csv.reader(f))
This requires python 3.4+ (for the pathlib module).
If you still need to support older versions, you can get the same result with:
import csv
import os.path
my_path = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__))
path = os.path.join(my_path, "../data/test.csv")
with open(path) as f:
test = list(csv.reader(f))
[2020 edit: python3.4+ should now be the norm, so I moved the pathlib version inspired by jpyams’ comment first]