Sometimes, it's very useful to be able to create a temporary directory or file when running some code. For example, when writing tests that affect the disk, you can use temporary files and directories to run your logic and assert that it's correct, and to be sure that at the end of the test run, the test folder has no leftovers. Let's see how you do it in Python:

# files/tmp.py
import os
from tempfile import NamedTemporaryFile, TemporaryDirectory

with TemporaryDirectory(dir='.') as td:
    print('Temp directory:', td)
    with NamedTemporaryFile(dir=td) as t:
        name = t.name
        print(os.path.abspath(name))

The preceding example is quite straightforward: we create a temporary directory in the current one ("."), and we create a named temporary file in it. We print the filename, as well as its full path:

$ python tmp.py
Temp directory: ./tmpwa9bdwgo
/Users/fab/srv/lpp/ch7/files/tmpwa9bdwgo/tmp3d45hm46

Running this script will produce a different result every time. After all, it's a temporary random name we're creating here, right?