In this article, we’ll be able to guide you on how to extract the extension of a file name using Python programming.

In today’s digital era, files are an integral part of our daily life. Whether a student, professional, or homemaker, you must have come across various files in your routine. Files come in different types and extensions, and knowing the extension of a file can be crucial at times. Python is a high-level programming language that can make this task easy.

Understanding File Extensions

Before we dive into the coding part, let’s understand what file extensions are. A file extension is a suffix added to the end of a filename to indicate the format or type of a file. For example, a file with the extension “.txt” is a text file, and a file with the extension “.jpg” is a JPEG image file. File extensions are essential because they help the operating system recognize and classify different types of files.

Python Program to Extract File Extension

To extract the extension of a file using Python programming, you need to follow these simple steps:

Step 1: Get the filename from the user

The first step is to get the filename from the user. Then, you can use the input() function in Python to get the filename from the user. Here’s how you can do it:

				
					filename = input("Enter the file name: ")

Step 2: Use the split() method to split the filename

The second step is to split the filename using the split() method in Python. The split() method splits a string into a list based on the separator that you specify. In this case, we will split the filename based on the dot (“.”) separator. Here’s how you can do it:

This will also output the following:

				
					file_extension = filename.split(".")[-1]

The above code will split the filename based on the dot (“.”) separator and return the last item in the resulting list, which will be the file extension.

Step 3: Print the file extension

The final step is to print the file extension. Here’s how you can do it:

				
					print("The extension of the file is: " + file_extension)

This will print the file extension on the console.

				
					Final Thoughts

In this article, we discussed how to extract the extension of a file using Python programming. With just a few lines of code, you can get the file extension of any file. Knowing the file extension can be helpful in various scenarios, such as when you need to open a file in a specific program or when you want to filter files based on their type. This article has helped help you figure out how to extract the extension of a file name using Python programming.


Thanks for reading. Happy coding!