Python: Module Path – List Modules & Get Locations

Let’s say you have a Python module somehow installed on a computer, so you can “import” it, and you want to find a path to this module to check its source files.

In this note i am showing how to list all the locally installed Python modules and how to find the paths to these Python modules.

Cool Tip: How to list dependencies of the installed Python packages! Read More →

Python Module Path

To search for the location of the Python modules, firstly start the Python shell:

$ python
- sample output -
Python 3.8.10 (default, Sep 28 2021, 16:10:42) 
[GCC 9.3.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

List all the installed Python modules, by running the help('modules') command:

>>> help('modules')
- sample output -
Please wait a moment while I gather a list of all available modules...

IPython             appdirs             h11                 retrying
OpenSSL             argparse            hashlib             rlcompleter
__future__          array               heapq               runpy
_abc                ast                 hmac                sched
_ast                asttokens           html                script
...

To get the Python module’s path, execute the commands as follows:

>>> import os.path
>>> import <moduleName>
>>> print os.path.abspath(<moduleName>.__file__)

For example, to search for the Python pandas module’s source files location, execute:

>>> import os.path
>>> import pandas
>>> print(os.path.abspath(pandas.__file__))
- sample output -
/home/user/projects/scraper/venv/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pandas/__init__.py

Cool Tip: How to install specific version of a package using pip! Read More →