This package provides functionality for manipulating FilePath values, and is shipped with GHC. It provides two variants for filepaths: legacy filepaths: type FilePath = String operating system abstracted filepaths (OsPath): internally unpinned ShortByteString (platform-dependent encoding) It is recommended to use OsPath when possible, because it is more correct. For each variant there are three main modules: System.FilePath.Posix / System.OsPath.Posix manipulates POSIX/Linux style FilePath values (with / as the path separator). System.FilePath.Windows / System.OsPath.Windows manipulates Windows style FilePath values (with either \ or / as the path separator, and deals with drives). System.FilePath / System.OsPath for dealing with current platform-specific filepaths For more powerful string manipulation of OsPath, you can use the os-string package (OsPath is a type synonym for OsString). An introduction into the new API can be found in this blog post. Code examples for the new API can be found here.