[Idle-dev] Re: idlefork merge underway - errata

[Guido van Rossum]

> > So please just do what I said. :-)
> 
> *L* No problem about that, I merged that change without question
> before I even asked. I was just curious. It seems a shame that with
> all the os.path stuff there is still no platform independent way to
> return an absolute execution path, without looking for a specific
> file or something like that.

Depends on what you call "an absolute execution path".  The issue of
symbolic links comes to mind.

> I thought the os.path.abspath() would
> go most of the way to solving that problem.  (hmm, what about using
> an os.path.join() in there, wouldn't that overcome the possible
> extra path separator problem? I must play around with this in the
> interpreter) Don't worry, I'm not interested in fixing stuff that
> isn't broken! But I am interested in learning the best methods for
> doing things for future use in my own work.

My point was, the absolute execution path of the script that started
execution is of no importance -- what's important is the location of
the code modules comprising IDLE.  They are not necessarily related.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)