Why os.path.join returns result with 2 slashes?

Question

Why does it add 2 '\' instead of 1 '/'? I am trying to create a cats folder(using Jupyter Notebook) inside the train directory for my model where I will place the cat's images. As it os.path.join returns 2 '\' that is why I am unable to copy/place images there through code. Can anybody help me better understand os.path.join as I have gone through several articles but those were of no help

base_dir = "CNN_Working/cats_and_dogs_small"
train_dir = os.path.join(base_dir, 'train')
os.mkdir(train_dir)

train_cats_dir = os.path.join(train_dir, 'cats')
os.mkdir(train_cats_dir)

train_cats_dir

This is what it returns

'CNN_Working\\cats_and_dogs_small\\train\\cats'

instead of one '/' it returns 2 '\'?

Answer 1

Probably you're using Windows and while using Python on It you commonly use double backslashes '\'. On unix systems you'll got the '/'.

Answer 2

Looks like you're working on a Windows system.

Running your code on MacOS I get:

(base) X 68884371 % python3 script.py
CNN_Working/cats_and_dogs_small/train
CNN_Working/cats_and_dogs_small/train/cats

When you're running on Windows, the directory seprator is \, not /. But, because of Python's escaping, when you print it, you see \\, because Python escapes the slash.