How can Python be forced to use raw string equivalent of variable-stored paths on Windows? - python-3.x

Question

It might seem that this question has been asked hundreds of times, but reading every variant of it, it's clear it has never been fully answered, at least not in the context I am experiencing.
I have a filename variable that is being obtained through a dialog (in Blender), and I need to both use the file name and iterate over its directory. The problem is that Python cannot properly convert the backslashes to forward slashes.
Here is the filename: 'D:\scans\testing\2021_12_01_14_41_38\frame_00000.json'
Storing this in a variable yields 'D:\scans\testing\x821_12_01_14_41_38\x0crame_00000.json'.
In other words, once the dialog passes the filename to the variable, nothing more can be done with it. The file itself may be opened, but attempting any other operation on it automatically converts the escape characters.
Here are some other approaches I have tried:
Attempting a find replace using filename.replace('\\','/') yields 'D:/scans\testing\x821_12_01_14_41_38\x0crame_00000.json'.
Using pathlib.Path(filename) yields a WindowsPath object:
WindowsPath('D:/scans\testing\x821_12_01_14_41_38\x0crame_00000.json')
All I need is the directory and the file separated, but even os.path.basename yields
'testing\x821_12_01_14_41_38\x0crame_00000.json'.
Even trying repr(filename) is to no avail. It yields "'D:\\scans\\testing\x821_12_01_14_41_38\x0crame_00000.json'"
re.sub('\\\\','/',filename) yields 'D:/scans\testing\x821_12_01_14_41_38\x0crame_00000.json'
It's mind boggling that such a simple operation on Windows is so complicated, as I have done it millions of times on Linux (yes, I know). Unfortunately, I cannot use the raw string method (r'string') because this is a variable, not a string. I have seen crazy ideas out there such as r'{}'.format(variable), but that doesn't work for obvious reasons.
I could list hundreds of other failed attempts, including abspath, relpath, and find / replace, and they all lead nowhere. Surely, there is a way to take a full-path filename from a dialog in Windows (in this case, Blender) and split the directory and filename apart?
If you have any ideas how I might work around this problem, please share.

Answer 1

You can try removing the inverted commas form the string while using the variable which has the string stored in it.
I was trying to find file size where file path was chosen by user:
import os
take input on file path
file_path = input("Enter file path without inverted commas:")
prints the size of the file in bytes
print(os.path.getsize(file_path))
Note:
When I copied the path it was copied like this:
"D:\Dev\repo\t1_old\task.py"
So I had to remove the inverted commas, only then the os.path.getsize(file_path) worked.
If I did not remove inverted commas while entering the file path, it gives an error