samefile

Samefile is a method in Python’s pathlib.Path that determines whether two paths refer to the same underlying file on the filesystem. It is effectively a high-level wrapper around the underlying OS identity checks used by os.path.samefile, and it compares the identity metadata of two paths to decide if they point to the same file.

Usage and behavior: Path.samefile(other_path) returns a boolean indicating whether self and other_path refer to the same file. It accepts any path-like object for other_path. The method resolves symbolic links and uses filesystem metadata (such as device and inode numbers on POSIX systems, or equivalent identifiers on Windows) to determine identity. Both paths must exist; if either path does not exist, a FileNotFoundError is raised. If other_path is not a path-like object, a TypeError may be raised when converting it to a Path.

Cross-platform notes: On Unix-like systems, the check relies on inode and device numbers. On Windows, it uses the platform’s file-identification metadata. Because identity can depend on the filesystem, results may vary across different environments or networked filesystems.

Related functions: The same functionality is available as os.path.samefile for a functional, non-Path-based interface. Path.samefile is essentially equivalent to os.path.samefile and can be preferred for Pythonic code using pathlib objects.

Example: from pathlib import Path; a = Path('foo.txt'); b = Path('bar/../foo.txt'); a.samefile(b) # returns True if both paths refer to the same file.