what does the __file__ variable mean/do?

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When a module is loaded from a file in Python, __file__ is set to its path. You can then use that with other functions to find the directory that the file is located in.

Taking your examples one at a time:

A = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), '..')
# A is the parent directory of the directory where program resides.

B = os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__))
# B is the canonicalised (?) directory where the program resides.

C = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__))
# C is the absolute path of the directory where the program resides.

You can see the various values returned from these here:

import os
print(__file__)
print(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), '..'))
print(os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__)))
print(os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__)))

and make sure you run it from different locations (such as ./text.py, ~/python/text.py and so forth) to see what difference that makes.

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