Sometimes, all you want to do with an arbitrary string, is to use it to create a file or a directory. Really, that’s all. Nothing too special about it, right?

Alas! This is the root of all evil!

Arbitrary strings are dangerous, and should be handled with the utmost care, as if they were explosives, or Frank Underwood’s new liver! (sorry)

Wait, but, how exactly are they to be handled? And why should you reimplement this apparently basic, but practically risky, functionality every time you need it?

This is exactly what my ostrich.utils.text.get_safe_path() OstrichLib function set out to solve once and for all 🙂

It’s already available in Ostrich Lib in release v0.0. It’s also released to PyPI, meaning you can get it now with pip install ostrichlib. It’s tested (using Travis CI) against Python 2 & 3, and requires only the future library as an external dependency (which makes everyone happier with Python 2 / Python 3 compatibility). Detailed library documentation are available via Read the Docs. Hurray!

I would love to get some review from others for my solution, given the risky nature of the problem.