Consider allowing directory to search for in `find_dotenv`

[Samyak2]

The issue

Currently, find_dotenv takes the cwd or the directory of the python file that called it. This does not allow specifying a custom directory to search for the .env file without temporarily switching the cwd before calling find_dotenv.

Proposed solution

Add a dir: Optional[StrPath] argument and use that instead of inferring if it's not None.

[mukulbindal]

I would like to work on this, please assign to me
!assign

[p13rr0m]

I have a similar use case to this. I have multiple projects within a single repo that all use similar environment variables. Right now, I have an .env file for each project. Whenever I change the value of one variable, I have to change it in all .env files. It would be great if I could define a single .env file in the parent directory, and python-dotenv would look that up.

[theskumar]

Does "load_dotenv("/path/to/.env")" not solve for your use case?