Dynamically generating Strings (or other variables)
For something similar to your Java solution, you could have this in filetype.py:

import os.path

class FileType(object):
    HOME_DIRECTORY = "/path/to/scripts"

    def __init__(self, extension):
        self.extension = extension

    def file_path(self, name):
        return os.path.join(self.HOME_DIRECTORY, name + self.extension)

SHELL_SCRIPT = FileType(".ksh")
CONFIGURATION = FileType(".conf")


Then the usage would be

import filetype
filetype.SHELL_SCRIPT.file_path("onhand_accuracy")